


Phillip

by Kathar



Series: Chris [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drowning, F/M, Jasper Sitwell's multilingual potty mouth, M/M, Mission Fic, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, additional warnings in end notes, background Clint Barton/Bobbi Morse - Freeform, floods, once-and-future Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 06:11:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4380287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kathar/pseuds/Kathar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s just an unexpected swim and a ramble through the desert. Nothing that should change the lives of at least three people-- but it does.</p><p>Two years ago, Clint Barton joined SHIELD and began working with Agent Coulson-- the man he’d had a week-long fling with three years prior. Of course, he’s only just figuring this out now, at the worst possible moment. (Or maybe the best.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Large parts of this story revolve around two people with significant past trauma discussing said trauma; please check the end notes if you need trigger warnings. No one is in danger of anything but drowning or heartbreak in this story.
> 
> I owe the beta team of Beta J, [Faeleverte](http://archiveofourown.org/users/faeleverte/pseuds/faeleverte), and LauraKaye more than I could ever hope to properly explain. They’ve each of them been, in their own ways, cheerleaders, strong critics, and patient martyrs to my tendency to send them bits of drafts designed to have the worst effect.

“Hey, Jas?”

There was silence on the other end of the com.

“Jaaaaaaasper? Agent Sitwell?” 

Still silence, except for a faint crackle and pop that proved the line hadn’t gone dead. Clint shuffled himself into a slightly more comfortable hunch a little further up inside the worn-away spot in the wall of the canyon that could, by a generous mind, barely be described as a cave. Grit sifted into the neck of his shirt and drizzle spat outside, speckling the light dirt dark.

Water had already begun to trickle down the formerly dry cut that ran just beyond the cave’s opening, and from there down the long slope into the canyon, a sign the rain was harder somewhere higher up the mountain. The floor of the cave itself was still parched but that didn't bring comfort. Clint wasn’t exactly a geology major, but even he could tell the water level in the arroyo would rise quickly, come up to work away at the walls of the cave it had formed with patient digging in past storms. If the rain picked up at all.... Well, if the rain picked up at all, this fucked-up op would no longer be an issue, and neither would anything else. 

Clint concentrated on staying quiet and small, tracing the faint petroglyphs on the wall over and over with one finger, and only realized he was mumbling _under my umbrella-ella-ella-eh-eh-eh_ under his breath when Agent Jasper Sitwell’s voice crackled over the com at last.

“What the fuck, Agent Barton? Are you singing Rihanna on coms on a live op?”

“It seemed appropriate to the weather, sir.” Clint huffed a little, hoping it would be mistaken for indignation. “Should I take it the radio silence was because you don’t approve of being called ‘Jas?’”

“The radio silence was because Agent Coulson was still active and in the middle of taking out a hostile helicopter. How are you coming at getting to the extraction point?” Jasper sounded distracted, distant over the line.

“I’m sorry, where did the helicopter come from-- and how the hell did Coulson get a team in place to take it out?” Clint asked, knowing it wasn’t an answer to Jasper’s question-- which probably was effectively an answer anyway, given that Jasper was used to him by now and knew when he was trying to divert.

He could _use_ a diversion, though, while he tried to figure out what to do. Before he started asking for things he couldn’t have, he needed to know if anyone could be spared to extract an idiot sniper who didn’t really do well in canyon country. And what the hell-- a helicopter might come in useful, too.

“Turns out, the helicopter is where the fuckers on the north ridge with the sniper rifles came from," Jasper said, and Clint snorted.

“Is that it? Not what you expect to see on a standard anti-smuggling op. Fuckers pissed me off-- I hope Coulson’s team got ‘em all.”

“You didn’t leave any of the snipers for anyone else _to_ get, Barton. And I didn’t say Coulson’s team took out the helicopter, I said _Agent Coulson_ took out the helicopter.”

It took Clint a long moment to decide he had, in fact, heard that right.

“You know what the worst part of being on the fucking front lines shooting people is, sir?” he asked finally. “It’s that you guys in the rear get all the drama. Are we all buttoned up?”

Jasper’s laugh was a burst of fuzz against his mic.

“In process.” 

In the distance, thunder rumbled. Clint winced and tried not to worry about the ever-increasing frequency of the splatters around him.

“Can we maybe go to Plan B on the extraction, then, sir? Because I don’t think I’m going to make it to the rendezvous. Kinda incapacitated here.” 

If Jasper had sounded faintly distant before, like he was talking from another room, that effect vanished suddenly. 

“Report, Agent Barton.”

“Had to take the hard way down from the nest, sir. Think I might have cracked a rib or two. Then there were more hostiles on my original route back so, uh, I improvised a bit. And, um, maybe one of those snipers got off a lucky shot, because there’s a bullet wound too. Just a graze... mostly. I dressed it.” Clint paused, swallowing dust, and resettled himself before going on. This last wound was the worst by far, sustained when he’d been “improvising” his way out of the ambush he’d nearly sensed too late. “I’m also gonna kind of need a new bow, because mine is about halfway to the Gulf by now, or wherever that creek goes.”

“Where the hell are you?” 

Jasper’d gone distant again, but Clint had worked with him a while now-- a couple-few years anyway-- and that was more than long enough to know that didn’t mean a lack of interest in Clint’s fate. No, if he’d had to bet-- okay, he _was_ betting, really-- the distance was because Jasper’d suddenly burst into vehement hand gestures at whoever was closest, and had stopped paying attention to his mic. 

The hand gestures must have involved an appeal to a higher authority; Agent Coulson’s voice clicked onto the line with them.

“I’ve got your tracker coordinates, Agent,” he said, as cool if he hadn’t just minutes ago been single-handedly wrestling a helicopter, or whatever _taking it out_ meant. “Looks like you’re still in the canyon. Any road access?” 

The skies opened wide and the rain fell like darts.

“Negative,” Clint said, trying to concentrate on his boot laces. “I hear you took out a helicopter on your own, sir?”

“I might have.”

He _might_ have. Right. Who can keep track of a little thing like a heli, after all?

“It still work?” Clint asked.

“It will. Agent Collins will make sure it does.” 

Clint imagined the hapless Agent Collins, probably soaked by this point if the deluge was anything but hyper-localized, staring at her senior for half a moment before running off to upend one of the support trucks in search of a tool kit. 

Water started tumbling down the arroyo beside him, and Clint hoped Agent Collins was a fast worker. 

“I’m about fifty yards down in the canyon, sir,” he said aloud, “in a kind of cave. Gotta be half a mile west-northwest of where I started.”

Not that anyone cared, but Clint was actually pretty damned impressed he’d managed to keep track of it, what with the stumbling and the bleeding and the general having to turn and take his pursuers out-- and then the whole _losing his favorite compound_ thing, which was the kind of detail that could distract a guy.

“Is the location secure?” Coulson asked. Clint bit back a bitter laugh.

“No hostiles-- anymore, anyway. There’s this little cut-away next to me, that's gonna turn into a pretty nice-sized stream here in a minute or two, unless the rain stops. Um, I’ve got maybe two feet here before it reaches me?” Clint said.

Sitwell’s voice in the background turned into a solid wall of multilingual curses. 

“Hey, Jas, I’m glad to know the cussing lessons took, but I don’t think that’s physically possible,” Clint replied-- and the blood loss must be worse than he thought, because he could have sworn he heard Coulson chuckle, a strained little sound. 

\----

Two minutes ago, everything had been bone-dry and under control--or close enough for government work, and SHIELD was close enough to government for that to count. One check-in from their lone remaining agent who hadn't made it back to the extraction point later, and everything was sodden and spiraling further out of his grasp. Typical Barton, upending his life in the space of a minute. Not that he did it on purpose. 

Phil Coulson tipped his head back and closed his eyes, hoping the gesture would be mistaken for a weather check, or even a sigh of resignation, rather than what it was--something far too close to prayer for comfort.

_God preserve me from my own idiocy. One of these days, that man will be the death of me._

“Agent May,” he said out loud, without bothering to look around and find her, “Send off the last trucks and be ready to go as soon as Collins gets that bird flight-worthy. Agent Sitwell and I will join you.” 

She probably nodded in response; hell, this was Melinda May, she might have actually saluted, just because she knew he couldn’t see it. 

“Transferring an emergency med kit and a backboard, anything else?” she said, from somewhere in front of him. Phil opened his eyes and sighed, dropping his gaze back down to earth. 

The conglomeration of jeeps, SUVs, and transport trucks that had marked their post had already diminished, nearly all of them rumbling back through the sudden deluge towards their New Mexico facilities, hours and mountain ranges away. Some were carrying the surviving members of the smuggling ring that had been much more willing to go down fighting than he’d expected. Others, far more heavily armored, were transporting the 0-8-4s that the smugglers had been so desperate to guard. Phil’d been looking forward to being on one of the last transports himself. Clearly, he needed to stop looking forward to things; it only caused trouble.

May was rapidly cannibalizing one of the remaining trucks, with the controlled enthusiasm that was the major reason Phil’d stolen her out from under the noses of her former COs-- and was going to resist any and all attempts at retrieval. 

“That fucker’s never gonna be able to get himself out to an extraction point, Coulson,” Jasper Sitwell said, coming up next to him. 

Phil turned, a little stunned that Sitwell’d managed to limit himself to one expletive in the sentence, under the circumstances. Every redacted swear word was appearing on his face, because of course Phil wasn’t the only-- wasn’t even, if he was honest, the _primary_ \-- agent worried about Barton.

Sitwell and Barton’s friendship, born, frankly, of Phil’s desperate desire not to engage in anything that could possibly be categorized as a “hands-on” relationship with the newly-recruited Clint Barton, had turned into something almost more like a sustained twin trapeze act than a partnership. 

The two of them had risen two security levels in the last year and a half, were as indispensable to him now as Melinda May, and had received several commendations. When Fury talked about “the new SHIELD” to the World Security Council or their other partners, it was Sitwell and Barton he used as an example. 

Which was exactly what Fury'd hired Phil to create, after all. And, as far as Phil was concerned, it was the entire reason he’d recruited Sitwell in the first place, pulling him away from an incipient post-Army career in the diplomatic corps. Sitwell knew instinctively how to work with people like Clint Barton who were both insanely talented and fairly unstable. Other nervous agents instinctively calmed around Sitwell; it was like he exuded some kind of chill-out field from his person.

Of course, Jasper himself was quietly crazy; it didn’t hit you just how off-kilter he was until you’d known him for years. It was hitting Phil now.

“If we can find him, we can lower the backboard and an agent.”

“If we get there before the creek bed floods and drowns him. Permission to go in after him? I can get a jeep right to the edge of the cliff.”

“What are you going to do from there? Jump?”

Jasper shrugged.

“Something like that. C’mon, Coulson, that bird’s not gonna fly in time. I can’t… we…” he ducked his head, twitching jaw giving away exactly what he was trying to avoid saying.

It was the stupidest idea Phil’d heard this entire op, and that had included his own-- entirely logical at the time-- train of thought that had ended in _there’s no need to wait for back-up, that whirlybird’s a sitting duck._

He _should_ have said no. He _should_ have said “I’m not risking two agents; one’s bad enough already.” Should have throttled the instinct within him growling that he wasn’t going to let any agent die, and _especially_ not--

But Jasper wasn’t the only one with a sensitive Barton-reflex.

Phil said yes.

\----

The water was rising exponentially now and the remains of a large bush came tumbling past him in the froth, followed by the body of a jackrabbit. Clint gulped as he watched the carcass carom against the rapidly-crumbling sides of the arroyo, following its progress until it twisted out of sight. 

Any hope he’d had of getting out of his crevasse by himself had disappeared along with the little track he’d used to get into it, all those hours earlier. He was trapped until the water went down-- or up. Up seemed to be more likely at the moment.

 _Not the first flood you’ve survived, Barton_ he thought, then flung himself at the hard, sandy wall, to keep himself from completing it with anything like _maybe this one’s the one that gets you._

No. If he was goin’ out, fine-- but he wasn’t gonna go out feeling sorry for himself. Clint tried to think about rescue, about helicopters and fast ropes and evacs. When that wasn’t enough he started to think to himself _Bobbi will kill me when I get back to base_ , but that seemed too much like a daydream to be believable. 

Finally he heard Agent Coulson’s voice again, faint in his ear.

“Agent Sitwell is headed for your location on foot, Barton. The helicopter will be there as soon as possible.”

“Sir, I don’t think you can get here on foot.” Clint tried to say, but there was too much roaring in his ears and he wasn’t sure whether he’d said it or only thought it, or whether Coulson would hear it over the pounding blood. 

There was something a little wrong with that thought, but Clint couldn’t quite put a finger on it. He shook his head and concentrated on Coulson-- or tried to. Clint knew his voice well enough after two years, and recognized the iron creeping into it the way it did whenever an op went bad. 

He didn’t know Coulson’s face nearly as well; they didn’t meet much in person, though Coulson’d been his commanding officer frequently over the last couple years, probably because Jasper was his pet, and Jasper brought Clint along like a shadow, whatever he did. Usually, though, Coulson was the face across the briefing table, a voice in his ear, the guy back at ops. 

Didn’t take much imagination to picture Coulson at the moment, though-- probably bedraggled as a drowned rat, his shirt soaked to near-transparency and clinging under his kevlar. Those crinkled eyes of his, the one feature Clint paid most attention to, would be flat and unreadable, no trace of the rare twinkle that Clint had surprised in them twice, when Coulson was off-guard.

Clint resented those twinkling eyes a little. They reminded him of someone he'd known once, for just a little while, in another life, before he left for the war and Clint just... left. Someone louder, larger, warmer, than Agent Coulson. Someone who had smiled freely and blushed all the way from his ears to his collarbone when Clint winked at him. Someone who had trusted Clint way more than he should have-- and who Clint hadn't even trusted with his real name. 

Admittedly, Coulson's eyes weren’t the only things about him that sometimes brought Clint up short. His ass, for instance, seemed oddly familiar-- but then, everyone in SHIELD had a nice ass, it was probably a check box on a recruitment form somewhere. The sad part was not that Clint was seeing phantom asses out of his past wherever he turned, it was that Phillip had apparently grown blurry to his mind's eye-- farsight was no match for the myopia of memory.

Other memories of that week in Miami had been pounded in more deeply. That was how, after the initial shock when he first saw the man up close, Clint knew Agent Phil Coulson wasn’t actually his Phillip (who Clint couldn't imagine calling himself something as drab as _Phil_ , anyway). Clint wasn't in the habit of flattering himself, but he was damn sure that Coulson wouldn’t have been looking him that impassively if he’d been the same man who’d flattened a kid he thought was named Chris into the mattress, grabbed his hair, and done his level best to drive them both through the box frame. 

Nope, that definitely was _not_ something he could imagine lean, buttoned-up Agent Coulson with his tailored Dolce doing. That was what made it so bad when his eyes twinkled, the echo of a different man in his face.

Clint wondered, sometimes, what had happened to Phillip of the twinkling eyes and the amazing arms. What his life had turned into after Clint ran away from him in a taqueria in Miami. When he imagined Phillip in the present day, it was always as a soldier. He’d seemed like the last person who’d get out while there was still a war on-- Phillip didn’t leave his people behind. Didn’t take more than a couple days, much less the week they’d had, to figure _that_ one out. As long as there was a war zone, Phillip would be striding through it, smiling grimly.

So Clint always thought of him in the field, half-buried in sand or dust, that powerful body reaching out, eyes half-blind. Perhaps he was giving orders, now, protecting his troops with all the vehemence he had brought to sex-- or to trying to screw Clint's head on right.

He hoped that Phillip would be pleased with how Clint'd finally ended up, if he ever found out. Phillip had tried to convince Clint he deserved to have decent support, and SHIELD was nothing if not that. Hell, Coulson's team was miles beyond anything even Phillip had thought he was worthy of, much less the kind of shit Clint had thought his due, before Jasper’d showed up in a back alley in Rotterdam to seduce him with promises of decent health care.

Phillip would appreciate that, at least, if Clint ever saw him again. Hell, he might even, someday, get to see Clint in action, if Clint ever got an op in whatever armpit of the world Phillip was currently stationed in. And… if they did meet, and if Clint managed to be sufficiently impressive, maybe Phillip would let those eyes twinkle in Clint’s direction one more time.

At least Phillip wasn’t here now to see how weak Clint was-- already trembling and rocking like some fucking rodent in an unstable burrow. Too slow to keep from getting shot in the first place, too stupid to know what the geography would mean when the rains came, too weak to move.

Coulson was still on the line with him, talking logistics and landmarks, his voice going all strained and thin as the deluge increased. Clint could maybe understand a quarter of of the words, was too tired to respond to anything.

He squeezed his eyes shut. Looking at the rushing water, hearing the rain, the crack of lightning-- or maybe that was a tree or maybe the sky itself-- was not going to help. The resin scent of broken creosote bush swirled around him, brought in on the cold wind that whistled as it gusted into the canyon.

A lizard skittered across his knee and further towards the back of the cave. Clint peeked once, saw the whitecaps on the rising torrent of muddy water, and shuddered himself into a smaller ball.

The storm slithered through the bends in his limbs, scent of creosote and petrichor blending with the sweet tang of sewage and moss. The air around him thickened and grew salty.

And did he hear the wind picking up or was that only the palm trees snapping and the water bursting levees and rushing through the streets?

Was he hearing a baby crying? 

It had stopped, anyway. Gurgled then stopped.

Then the wailing started, wind and water and women all together.

Clint gave up trying to listen to Coulson and curled his arms over his head, huddled against the hurricane.

Time and the water rushed on.

\----

Clint came back to lucidity-- for a given definition of ‘lucidity’-- when Jasper’s voice dragged him into the present. 

Mercifully, the rain seemed to have slowed while he was busy losing time. It had thinned to a light curtain and Jasper was clearly visible on the other side of the arroyo, trailing a line he must've managed to drop down the side of the canyon. His field suit was nearly indistinguishable under the caked-on mud, and he was trying to maneuver a large tree trunk across the rushing water to Clint. 

He was still cursing, and probably had been since he’d left Agent Coulson-- a round of profanities as well-worn as a string of beads, telling off Clint, the weather, SHIELD, Clint's mother, Agent Coulson, Agent Coulson's mother, the weather again, the weather's mother. He broke off to yell:

"Clint, move, goddammit! Help me out here, you sorry-ass son of a lazy mountain goat!”

At least, Clint thought he’d said "mountain goat." His Albanian was admittedly spotty. (So was Jasper's, to be fair.)

"Ow!" He shouted back, since it was the only word his mouth would form.

Jasper paused in his tirade and dragged a hand over his forehead.

"And thank you for deciding to join your rescue already in progress. Come on, Clint, hurry up!" 

Clint knew perfectly well what Jasper wanted him to do with that trunk. He just didn’t think he was gonna be able to move enough to do so. 

“Sorry!” he yelled-- tried to yell, anyway. It came out more of a creaky rasp, burning his throat.

As sitreps went it was kinda hilariously inadequate, but apparently it was enough for Jasper Motherfucking Sitwell. He shook his head and pinned the trunk down with his thighs, thumping it to make sure it couldn’t move, as the cold ochre water churned at his knees. He began detach the carabiner from his waist. 

_What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Jas?_

Clint didn’t have the strength to do more than shake his head slowly as Jasper reared back and tossed the end of the fast line at him. It hit his forehead before falling into his lap, insult to fucking injury, and Clint just stared at the damned thing, wanting to yell that Jasper’d clearly overestimated Clint’s… anything… at the moment.

Instead he dragged in a breath, and reached for the end of the line.

His fingers were cold, stiff, and shaking but he eventually fumbled the carabiner open. Jasper’s curses were as constant as the rush of water in the background, ever increasing (or maybe the water was diminishing). The open edge of the carabiner bit into Clint's thumb as sharp as a viper-- he nearly dropped it before he managed to fumble it onto his belt loop. It closed over the fabric the first time, and he cried as he pulled it free and repositioned it. He’d climbed buildings with less effort.

“You secure?” Sitwell called.

Clint gave a rather stiff thumbs-up.

And then Jasper yanked him bodily into the rushing water.

He went in just upstream of the tree trunk. Clint had just time for one fervent _fuck_ before the trunk was upon him. Or him upon it-- made little fucking difference to his ribs.

It _hurts_ when a wall of water folds you in half around a used-to-be tree. When your arms aren’t strong enough to hold on, can’t even begin to get a grip over slick bark.

Clint felt himself slipping off, down, into the current, water rushing into his ears, bubbling against his eardrums.

Water carrying him down the canyon, out past the bodies of jackrabbits and the detritus of daily life like charcoal grills and vinyl collections and the family dog and over the levee and he was going under and--

Jasper had his arms around him, and was dragging him up onto high ground.

He left the trunk bobbing half on the water and half on the shore, where he must have dragged it while using it to catch Clint and pull him across. Jasper's arms were shaking, his breath coming hot in Clint’s ear as he bent Clint over and let him cough and cough and cough, shaking his head like a dog till all the water was out of his ears as well as his lungs.

“Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry,” Clint found himself muttering.

“Don’t you ever fucking scare me like that again, Barton,” Jasper screamed at him, voice raw. “Unless you want me to be even rougher saving your ass next time."

Clint valiantly attempted to come up with some kind of snark, but the best he could manage was a half-choked

"You wish." 

Jasper snorted.

"Don't bother. Just let me look at your motherfucking ribs, you asshole.”  
__

“Gonna need to tell Bobbi.” Clint’s voice was trying to claw its way out of his throat, and he didn’t think he appreciated how dry all this water had made him feel. “Gonna need to tell her... can’t go to California... until I heal up. Don't want her to think I ditched her.”

“That's what you're worried about?” Jasper asked him, voice hollow in the blackness, nearly unintelligible through the buzz and clatter of the motorboats and the rescue choppers overhead, coming close then skittering off towards other, presumably more worthy, rescuees. 

Clint blinked himself awake.

The horrible buzzing in his ears actually was the rotor of a helicopter, and miracle of miracles he was inside its belly, far from the flood and the rain. He shifted and realized he was half-propped against the wall, swaddled in foil blankets. Jasper was sitting next to him and lowering a water bottle to his lips. Clint opened his mouth enough to accept the drink, then huffed and addressed Jasper's question.

“Can’t let her down now, Jas. Fresh start, right? Gotta be there. We'll fix it yet; you'll see.” 

Jasper just shook his head and let it be, for which Clint was grateful. It hurt to talk about Bobbi. Hurt to _think_ about her, too, but at the moment it seemed to be a choice between that and slipping back to the horrible humid decay of New Orleans in the days after Katrina. 

Which meant it was no choice at all, really.

When it had been good with Bobbi, it had been flat out fucking amazing, and it had been that way for almost a year. Bobbi was everything, really. So smart just being around her probably raised his IQ. Enough badass competence for any three SHIELD agents. And all that brain and sass carried in a body so sweet you could curl into her like tucking into a goddamn angel food cake. Clint had never known life could be like it was with her. He’d lie in their bed for hours at a time in the early mornings when he couldn't sleep, listening to her talk while the rain dripped down the window. She teased him in a light, mocking tone that made half of him want to shake her and the other half want to drop her right back into bed-- even when bed was miles away. 

He'd nearly missed out on the best thing ever to happen to him, too. Hardly said more than two words in her direction during their shared probationary period at SHIELD, and when, after that, she'd disappeared for a bit he barely noticed. Not, anyway, until one of the first real missions Coulson had assigned him and Jasper. 

It was supposed to be a fairly simple operation-- find and extract one of their undercover agents from a shady biochemical research facility-- but it had gone wrong from the start and only gotten wronger as it went on. By the time he'd finally rolled into the courtyard at the wheel of a stolen Yugo, he'd been sure he was too late.

It was the first time Agent Barbara Morse would surprise him. She had been standing in front of a pile of unconscious thugs in a little blue dress, a labcoat, and one thigh-high boot, holding a set of staves braced at the defensive, and waiting impatiently. 

"Didja stop for lunch on the way here?" had been the first thing she'd asked him as she sauntered to the car.

By which he had assumed-- hoped-- she meant "glad to see you."

"Sorry. Didn't have change for the toll," he'd told her. By which _he_ had meant "the guards who were supposed to be rotating off shift didn't, but since I've dumped them in the coal cellar we're clear to go, you're welcome."

"Ah," she'd replied as they left, "I hate having to scrounge around for change." By which she'd clearly meant "thank you." And then she'd leaned out the window and shot a pursuing cyclist just as Clint drove them over the edge of a low stone wall.

He'd been feeling pretty good about life in general and the agent next to him when fifteen minutes later, taking a hairpin turn, they’d spotted a makeshift barricade across the road down below them. Peeping through the branches at an intimidating number of guards wasn't the best thing he could think of doing with her back in the bushes, but the life of SHIELD was a hard one and you made sacrifices sometimes.

“All right,” Clint had said after he’d counted heads a couple times. “Here’s the plan. I distract ‘em, and you turn around and get out of here-- get the data home.”

Bobbi had been leaning over his shoulder, her hair tangling in his mouth.

“What, run away and let you get captured?” she'd snapped. “Yeah I don’t think so. Not my style.”

“How’d you survive training?” he shot back. “You’re not running away, it’s a strategic retreat. Bring back help if you want.”

“Why don’t _you_ take the data then, Barton? They haven’t seen you-- won’t know who to look for.”

Clint, who would be the first to admit that maybe his mouth got the better of him around pretty girls and strong men, had snorted.

“Not my style either, babe, I don’t have a reverse gear." 

He'd glanced back to find her grinning. 

“Anyway,” he'd finished, “can’t let you have all the fun.”

Which was how they'd ended up barrelling down on the barricade at full speed with Bobbi driving and Clint hanging out the window, bow and arrow drawn.

By the time they'd gotten back to their base a week and a busted biochemical weapons ring later, they were an item. After only a month they'd gotten their first apartment outside of SHIELD together. After six they were already talking about compatible postings and what kinds of accommodations SHIELD made for married couples and families-- and maybe they’d be better off in functions that didn’t send them halfway around the world from each other quite so often. It wasn’t something Clint had ever dreamed he’d have: someone who wanted _him_ for life, who wanted _him_ to be her family. Who had lived with him for so long and not grown tired of him or run. Just watching her wake up next to him every morning sent gratitude shooting down Clint’s spine. 

So when she'd had an opportunity to transfer to California, he'd started seriously considering it-- and maybe an engagement ring. 

Jasper had tried to talk him out of it, which was flattering of him. Clint could admit he'd miss the jerk badly; he and Jas had gotten each other into and out of some pretty hinky shit over the course of the last couple years. But Jasper wasn't _Bobbi_. Which he’d admitted, after a little grumbling about Clint just not appreciating his assets properly and would it help if he wore a lower neckline?

Jasper hadn’t been able to move Clint, even with an offer of hot pants, and when the possibility of a transfer became the reality, he'd grumped for a few days and refused to sign the transfer papers himself. Instead, had sent Clint to Agent Coulson, to have him do the honors. 

The last time he’d been in Coulson’s office, sitting next to a bouncing Jasper, had been three weeks before the transfer request. Clint’d just received his Level Five-- long expected, it seemed, by everyone but him-- after he and Jasper had brought down a ring of human traffickers in Manila. (Typically for them, that hadn't been the objective-- they’d gone in on a background detail for a quite simple bait-and-switch op to feed a mark bad intelligence.) 

“Stop acting like you were just along for the ride; you brought that on yourself,” Jasper had told him that night, pointing at the promotion letter sitting in Clint’s lap. “Manila was a joint effort. You may still fill out paperwork like you’d prefer to use it as bedding for your fucking nests, but I've never seen a mission so screwed you couldn't somehow manage to land us both ass-upright. 'S a rare talent. My butt thanks you for saving it.”

Clint had snorted, but it was hard not to feel a little warm, as he sat in Coulson’s office and fidgeted with his new ID card. Jasper had grinned at him, and Coulson lounged behind his desk and listened with a half smile and maybe even something like pride leaking out of his eyes.

The next day, he'd told Jasper about California. The week after, his world had come crashing down. And by the time Clint stood in front of Coulson, asking to transfer out of his reach, the three weeks that had passed made his promotion seem like something out of a parallel life. 

The Coulson who accepted his transfer forms had been as closed off as that other Coulson had been alive, his face a complete blank as he listened. Clint couldn’t say he blamed the guy. It hadn’t exactly been Clint’s finest hour-- or minute-- or _picosecond_ even. 

It still embarrassed him, even weeks after the interview itself and with the sure knowledge that the transfer was Clint’s penance and salvation, how it had taken Coulson only the better part of two minutes to upend Clint’s feelings on the California project. Two minutes and one question:

“Agent Barton, wouldn’t you be bored in California?”

Oh, he’d said other things during the brief interview-- he’d commended Clint’s performance in the field, told him he’d give recommendations to anyone who needed them, explained the various teams and possibilities for promotion, and carefully not pried into the status of Clint’s relationship with Bobbi-- fuck word got around SHIELD fast. 

_Wouldn’t you be bored?_

It had rattled around in Clint’s brain as soon as he left the office. Had run through his head like a mantra while he’d practiced on the range. Had popped up in a sing-song refrain as he sat talking to Bobbi in the cafeteria at SHIELD trying to act naturally. Because _of course_ he would be fucking bored, but he owed it to Bobbi to be bored on her behalf, to try and do right by her. To try and glue back together what he’d managed to shatter so badly when _It_ had happened.

She still just called the whole damn chain of events, including the disciplinary hearing, her testimony, and her breakdown afterwards, _It_. A tiny word to encompass so much, nearly as small as the amount of time it had taken Clint to ruin both of their lives further.

By the time she’d finally told him what had been done to her, her eyes bleak as she gritted out “but I don’t run, Clint. You know that. Couldn’t let the bastard get away with it,” everything was already done and dusted. She'd stood alone not just at the end, for the entire fucking ordeal. Had apparently thought that he, the man she shared her bed and life with, was too screwed up to help. Not like she was wrong; their happy little world had been popped, and he'd been too fucking self-absorbed to even notice the air leaking out. 

So of course when he realized, there was nothing left for him to do except fuck everything up.

And oh man, if there was one thing Clint was good at, it was that. He had dominant fuck-up genes.

He’d realized as soon as he was done yelling and throwing things, had seen the way she crumpled in on herself, that he’d lost her. If he was honest, he'd known it during his meltdown; he'd only screamed harder as he got dragged under by his own bile, liked it’d stop him drowning. 

The aftermath had left her broken and bitter and brittle as ice, and as cold. She’d left their apartment that night to go stay with Melinda May. Clint, alone, had sat down on the couch and tried to convince himself he hadn't heard his own father in his voice as he’d yelled "Did you lie to me? Bobbi, were you fucking lying all this time?"

It didn’t work particularly well.

Because he was a stubborn asshole, he’d tried to make it better anyway. Apologized, even though every nerve in his body was telling him to run while he did it, sure she was going to punch him. She didn’t, of course, because she was Bobbi, and she would never in a million years. But her voice was harsh enough. He did manage to not beg-- he would have, he was _desperate_ to, but Doc Heilman had managed to get through his thick skull how bad an idea that would be. 

In _It_ s aftermath, she'd accepted the transfer to California, and he asked her to take him with, let him try again. Let him try to fix it-- fix them. Put back together the future he’d managed to shatter in one night. A long shot, sure, but Clint was great with those, he was amazing, he was _Hawkeye_ , and if she would just give him just the tiniest opening it’d be enough. 

And, again, because she was Bobbi, and she loved him, though _fuck_ knew why after what he’d done, she listened... eventually. Forgave him, even, or said she did.

And she said yes to California.

So. He had his shot. The chance to salvage something. Jasper Sitwell in hot pants could never beat that. 

Coulson had signed off on his transfer two weeks ago. California was a week away. And Clint'd just managed to half-drown himself in a canyon in Arizona. He tried to not feel too much relief. 

__

 

Phil slumped in the co-pilot’s seat of the helicopter, trying to hang onto the dregs of adrenaline. He couldn’t afford the after-mission crash, not until they’d gotten Barton-- and themselves-- evaced and safely back in a SHIELD installation. Next to him, May was frowning, her lower lip tucked between her teeth as she alternately coaxed and cursed the helicopter through the air. 

“You’re doing a fine job, Agent,” he told her, watching the instrument panel out of the corner of his eye while pretending to work on some of the initial post-op paperwork.

“I’d be doing much better if someone hadn’t tried to incapacitate the thing not an hour ago, sir.” 

There wasn’t much actual rancor in her voice, and Phil gave a thin smile before closing the file in his lap. He’d had it open largely out of habit; the cockpit was awash with a bleak twilight and the entire helicopter had set up a kind of unsteady shimmy. Pointless to even pretend to read at the moment.

“You know,” he mused as he watched the canyon wind on far below them, “I’d assumed that one of the benefits of leaving the Army was that I wouldn’t have to hear people ‘sir’ me all the time.”

“Did you really, sir?” May asked him, her voice distracted but her eyes sneaking his way with what might have been a little gleam of humor-- or perhaps she was reading something behind his head. “We must be quite a disappointment to you.”

He knew a dismissal when he heard one.

“Never, Agent May," he said, and began to get out of his seat. "I’ll just let you fly the helicopter, shall I?”

“You can send Collins forward, since I don’t think Barton’s going to be up to co-piloting for a while yet, Agent Coulson... sir.” 

She got the laugh out of him that she deserved, and he tagged Collins on his way out. Collins was still covered in machine oil and mud; she grabbed a spare rag on her way forward. When Phil turned around for a last look, he saw her laying it on the seat before sinking down herself.

He lingered just at the junction between the cockpit and the belly of the chopper, uncertain.

In the back, Jasper Sitwell was transparently attempting to keep Clint-- Barton-- conscious through conversation. Their voices drifted, only briefly intelligible over the sound of the rotors.

He caught enough to know they were talking women-- or at least Jasper was, trying to get Barton to express an opinion on the vital question of an appropriate gift for a second anniversary that was also, technically, about a three month anniversary. Or was it a three month re-anniversary? How were relationships counted after a break, anyway? Did the length of time in between matter? As the conversation derailed into nomenclature, Phil found himself a seat as close to the cockpit as possible. 

The last thing he needed was to be invited into that conversation. Even if he’d _had_ an answer (and he didn’t-- the question had failed to arise the one time Phil had been in such a position personally), he really didn’t want to listen to them talk about their respective girlfriends. Phil didn’t dislike either of their women--he had a high respect for Bobbi Morse and while Jasper’s girlfriend Cecelia from R &D seemed a little flighty, Phil wasn’t the one dating her. He just didn’t like disruption in a high performing team like his. That was _all_.

And disruption there certainly was. Even without the conversation Phil was currently trying with all his might not to overhear, it would have been apparent that Jasper was in the on-again portion of his intermittent relationship with Cecelia. Jasper tended to buzz off his thinning hair but forget to shave his face during their off-again moments, just exactly the kind of dead giveaway Phil had devoutly hoped he’d trained Jasper better than to fall into. But Jasper wasn’t the one who was planning to _leave_.

In the two years since Nick Fury had shoved him back into the field, flailing and cursing, Phil had spent a lot of time begging, borrowing, and sometimes outright stealing a team he and Fury could be proud of. He’d scrounged up a loose cadre of miscellaneous assets, field agents and specialists who were able to handle his own particular interests in the _weird_ side of SHIELD without bugging out. Supposedly all of SHIELD walked in the weird, but some of SHIELD walked weirder than others. 

Phil’s ad hoc teams walked weirdest of all. They got the jobs that required an inventive mind, as Fury’d put it. Not a single one of his supervising field agents was under Level Six anymore, and the rest were mostly Level Fives. And they all deserved it, his Melinda Mays and Clint Bartons and Bobbi Morses and Jasper Sitwells. They were _his_ , even if the command structure said different. No, he had enough to contend with, what with most of them having other supervising officers who were still under the impression they might actually want to use their agents, for some blessed reason. 

He didn’t need to lose agents entirely on their own hook to _California._ Especially not Clint Barton.

When Phil’d signed Barton’s transfer slip to the San Diego branch two weeks ago, he’d done it while swallowing back bile. The interview had been hopelessly awkward. Even though he’d kept himself as positive as possible, Barton had stood tensely at attention-- or his half-assed impression of it, anyway. His face was blank, his hands twisted themselves together at his sides, and he seemed to find the Captain America paperweight on Phil’s desk endlessly fascinating. He did not look like a man sure in his own mind, and he also did not look like a man who realized he was being praised. 

It had taken real effort not to give into instinct to ask what more he could have done. Probably nothing, after all; Agent Morse had incentives on offer that Phil couldn’t hope to match. So Phil’d set pen to paper with as much good will as he could scrape together. 

After he'd finished, he made a mistake-- he looked up as he handed over the paper. Barton looked old, and as drawn as he had looked when he’d first come to SHIELD. Hell, he looked practically sick to his stomach as he stared at the paper in his hand. And yet he was set, Phil could see that-- as wildly determined on a mad, romantic course of action as….

Well.

As the kid Phil’d known in Miami a long time ago, who was sure killing was his only occupational skill and who wasn’t going to let anyone else tell him who to use it on. Whatever had happened between Clint and Agent Morse a few weeks ago-- and Phil had made it a point not to know-- had hollowed him right out. 

Phil imagined their life in California, was afraid he knew exactly how it would go. That in a few weeks, a month, a year at most, Agent Morse would be walking out of Barton's life and he’d be stuck in California with a pack of strangers, those puppy dog eyes, and no-one to pick him up or tell him to put down the gun. The thought was sickening, the reminder that it wasn't his place to ask bitter on his lips.

Somehow, what finally came out of his mouth was: 

“Agent Barton, wouldn’t you be bored in California?” His capacity for understatement had never been so stretched before.

Barton had blinked at him and said:

“This is about her, not what I want.” 

Phil had ended the interview as politely as possible after that, before he gave into one of his several conflicting urges. Probably the one to put his hand through a wall in a mixture of frustration at Barton and himself. 

It was nothing. Nothing at all. He just hated it when his top agents compromised themselves unnecessarily.

So no, he really did not want to listen to Jasper Sitwell and Clint Barton huddle in the back of a duct-taped chopper and talk about their love lives. He wanted to get out of this whole mess as quickly as possible, and without fucking anything more up. Phil was pretty sure that not fucking it up involved staying the hell away from Agent Clint Barton and his goddamned puppy dog eyes. 

He strapped himself into a jumpseat and clung to the frame. Staying the hell away was really hard when his feet and his ears kept on dragging him back as soon as he let them have their own way.

The sudden drop of the chopper a moment after Phil had that thought, nearly immediately accompanied by an ominous grinding sound from the rotors and a curse from the cockpit, was nearly a relief. Phil only hoped he wasn’t somehow responsible for it, just for the sake of cosmic irony.

\----

Clint was not precisely pleased to find himself waking out of his uneasy doze when the rotors stopped to realize they had not, in fact, landed. The rotors picked up again, just as Clint's heart prepared to fall through his feet, and soldiered on for another few rotations before stuttering again. Clearly they were going to be landing quite soon-- crashing, actually-- unless Agent May could pull off a miracle. 

May being May, of course she could, and did. She couldn’t stop them from falling out of the sky; that miracle would have taken Tony Stark himself working on the chopper with both hands and at least one foot while reciting a Hail Mary. May wasn't quite that good, but she did manage to turn their rapid descent into a kind of controlled tumble and skid down the side of the mountain. They all made it out in one piece, even if the helicopter itself didn’t.

Clint had somehow managed to avoid adding any new injuries to his collection during the crash, not that it helped much. His head already wasn’t exactly on quite right, what with the exhaustion, blood loss, and trauma from the flood, and he dipped in and out of consciousness, catching only little flashes of the next several hours:

Agent Coulson reeling off orders with all the indifferent efficiency of a robot.

Jasper and May dragging brush into a large pile a little away from the rocks they were using for shelter and watching it go up when they tossed a flare into it.

Agent Collins attempting to get the radio working and cycling through levels of static, country, sports talk, evangelism, and more static as she hunted in vain for official channels.

Jasper spoon-feeding him most of an MRE, which promptly came back up.

Clint dozed again after that, the people around him and high above on the hilltops blending into dark shadows against the orange glow of sunset. At one point two of the shadows hovered directly above him, murmuring, and their voices were tense. 

“... can’t remember if he hit his head, so I don’t know. Could be just exhaustion…” Jasper’s voice came out of one of the shadows.

“... need to watch him…. turns… doing apart from that? You were… back in the chopper?” And that was Phillip-- the note of concern was unmistakable even after so many years and his silhouette was broad against the pink of the last retreating clouds, simmering down below the horizon. Phillip belonged to the desert, and the desert had clearly delivered him.

Clint struggled with the damned sandbags trying to drag his eyelids back down.

“Phillip? You’re… you’re here,” he said-- slurred, maybe. “Sorry... about all the… mess. Didn’t want you to see.” He wasn’t making sense; he could tell by the way Phillip stared at him. The ground under him was treacherous, slipping from beneath his elbow when he tried to sit up. “Don’t go.”

“It’s okay,” Jasper said, swooping down over him and pressing him back to the ground. “We’re not going anywhere, Clint. Not ‘till the evac choppers come. Just rest.”

“No but,” Clint looked past his shoulder, straining to find Phillip. “No but… buy you a drink?”

“Yeah,” Jasper said, “you will. You owe us big time.” 

Clint gave up with a sigh and let sleep take him away-- but not before it occurred to him that at least one of the silhouettes had to be a hallucination.

Maybe he _had_ hit his head, after all.


	2. Chapter 2

Someone was calling Clint's name gently, waking him from a dream of being underwater. Being swept over the levees and out to sea with all the other garbage while Bobbi watched him impassively from the shore.

That someone was Agent Coulson. Clint blinked his eyes open to find Coulson watching him, patiently, his hand resting lightly on Clint's shoulder. 

It was just past twilight, a few stars peeking out already from the dark cracks between the empty expanses of sky that were still covered in retreating clouds. Coulson was silhouetted against the night, sitting cross-legged on the ground next to Clint, stained white dress shirt rolled up his forearms, half his suit lost. There were dark shadows in the planes of his face and his cheekbones flickered with red from the small fire beyond them. 

It must have been Coulson, not his Phillip, that Clint’d been talking to before he’d faceplanted into slumber. And here he’d thought he’d gotten over that particular delusion. Well-- at least the worst thing Coulson could accuse him of would be using his first name without permission.

Coulson turned his head away once he saw Clint was fully awake-- probably trying to give Clint some privacy in which to pull himself together. Clint was just opening his mouth to say he appreciated it when Coulson began to speak.

"You don't have to tell me where you picked up that trigger about drowning, Barton, but let me know if there’s anything I can do?"

Aw, fuck, so he'd been babbling as well as having a nightmare. What a pleasant jaunt this was turning out to be. He focused on the flicker of fire across Coulson's forearms and sighed.

"Just keep me out of any more flash floods and we’ll be all right, sir. Promise. Been living with this one for more’n two years and I’ve been taking baths without a freakout, you know?"

"Please don't call me sir." 

Coulson's voice was distracted, his face unreadable. He was watching the fire intently, willing himself to be mesmerized. Clint examined him closely as they talked, worrying at the set of his jaw, the hunch of his shoulders. He’d never seen Coulson from this angle before-- obviously, since it involved him flat on his back and staring upwards-- so really it shouldn’t have seemed so damned familiar. 

"Okay... Coulson?" 

Or should it be "Agent Coulson?" Fuck fuck fuck, where was his head? (Stupid question. It was right here and it _hurt like a motherfucker_.)

Coulson mustn't have minded, because he let out a pleased breath and looked over his shoulder, smiling faintly.

"We’ll try and avoid any kinds of flood, flash or otherwise. You handled it well, all things considered."

Clint snorted, despite himself. 

“I zoned out at least once waiting for Jasper, and then I forced you all to listen to me scream in my sleep. That’s your definition of ‘well,’ si-- Coulson?”

“I did say ‘all things considered,’ Barton. If you had done any of that after taking a bath we’d have been having a different talk. I’m guessing… I hope.…” His smile twisted a little bit; it might have been a trick of the light, but he almost seemed nervous. “You’ve let psych know about it, right?”

On that point, at least, Clint figured he could reassure his commanding officer.

"Yeah, yeah, I went to psych about it when I first got to SHIELD. I'm not a _complete_ idiot. Didn’t want it to mess up any ops." Except, apparently, the one they were on. 

Besides, the drowning thing was the least of the trauma Katrina’d dumped on him. Easiest to just kinda avoid, too, which was why he and Dr. H. had concentrated more on the _other_ thing. The thing where he ended up triggered when he was forced to _sit there and watch_ while people suffered, which would have been a bit of an issue for a field agent. They’d worked on _that_ one extensively, and he’d managed three hours in Taipei hiding in a closet while listening to Jasper being interrogated the next room over without busting in and blowing the whole op, hadn’t he? SHIELD was nothing if not big on exposure therapy.

If only he’d just had to watch Bobbi do something ridiculously hazardous for an op. He could have handled that without turning into a quivering, spittle-flecked ball of nervous rage, screaming at her when he meant himself. 

No, no, redirect, he needed to redirect. Don’t think about the fight with Bobbi; stare at Coulson's jawline again. Much better idea. Figure out what’s so damn _distracting_ about it that it’s starting to cause heartburn.

Coulson had turned away again, thank god.

"I thought you probably had. All of the medical appointments your first year here, the ones that drove Jasper crazy-- they were cover, weren’t they?” 

_No fuck,_ Clint thought. Well, no, only _mostly_ \-- a few of the other appointments had been legit. Lone-wolfing it was hard on the body. SHIELD medical had probably added five years to his useful field-life already-- assuming he lived long enough for that to matter. 

Clint would have taken up that much less disturbing line of discussion, but Coulson hadn’t stopped talking, damnit. Maybe it was the desert air making his voice seem so brittle? 

“I assume you've figured out that SHIELD doesn't think less of an agent for taking care of their mental health? That we'd never punish you for it?"

He seemed so worried about it that Clint nearly tripped over his tongue to tell him that yeah, he had. It had become apparent pretty early on in his time at SHIELD that they weren’t kidding with their mental health services. Clint had next to no basis for comparison, but he was still impressed. SHIELD's psychiatric staff was large, it was competent, and it moved fast. Also, and probably not coincidentally, almost the entire department at the New York base had worked there for five years or less. 

From what he’d heard, Nick Fury had tripled their funding when he became Director, recruited Agent Maria Hill (from either the Navy, the CIA, or the Men in Black, depending on who you asked), and tasked her with cleaning house. Hill, younger than all the other Level Sevens and serious as a heart attack, had moved with brutal efficiency. She’d half-supplanted the director of Human Resources, Dreyfuss, who'd never forgiven her or Fury-- or, for that matter, the man sitting next to Clint now. 

Dreyfuss had been on his way out as Clint had been on his way in. Everyone knew that Hill and Fury didn’t always see eyes to eye, but he'd made her the interim head of Administration within two years of her hire, had just confirmed her in her post, and had growled down anyone who challenged the wisdom of it. The grapevine was convinced that Hill and Coulson were locked in a silent, very polite, battle for the next Deputy Directorship of SHIELD, but Jasper swore up and down that Coulson didn’t really _want_ the post. Since the man in question just wrinkled his nose like a damned cat when the subject came up, Jasper’s opinion was definitely in the minority.

Clint decided now was as good a time as any to ask about that, and did, as politely as he could manage with a possible head injury. He didn't plan to have to listen-- just wanted to keep Coulson talking, keep him from prying too closely into _Clint_ while Clint tried to work out just what was itching in the back of his brain. But Coulson surprised him yet again.

"Agent Hill knows the kind of toll our line of work takes on people," he said. "Which is why I recommended to Fury that he put her in charge of Administration, not me."

"You recommended her?" Clint blurted out. "Why's it so important to you and the Director?"

"Ah." 

Coulson had been smiling down at him with that little half-smile of his, those fucking crinkly eyes soft at the edges. That stopped abruptly. For a long silent moment, in which Collins managed to pick up static twice more and then a college radio station, of all things, Clint thought Coulson wasn’t going to answer him. He wouldn’t have blamed the guy at all, because hello? Coulson didn’t have to justify anything to _him._

But then Coulson drew a breath in, let it out, and said:

"I think SHIELD’s always cared in _principle_ ; every agent probably knows someone who ended up with a case of PTSD or some other kind of trauma-- colleagues, comrades, friends, if not themselves. But… well. The higher up the chain of command you get, the more abstract the issue seems and the more other factors-- cost, the difficulty of finding good hires and keeping them, security clearances, worry about morale-- start to mess everything up. It’s personal for us-- for Hill and myself, and especially for Fury, I think.”

“You mean you all knew someone who… um. You all knew someone?” Clint asked, and realized he was starting to shift closer when his head protested. He stopped trying.

“Well. Hill knew someone, several someones really,” Coulson swallowed and continued on in a rush, like he was afraid the words wouldn’t come if he didn’t just tumble them out, "and Nick knows me.” 

“You?” Yeah sure, it was a desert, but Clint’s throat was still suddenly _a lot_ drier than it should have been.

Coulson nodded and shifted on his haunches, glancing over at Clint quickly-- then again more slowly.

“You have a spider,” he said, pointing over at Clint’s right arm, and Clint struggled to raise his head enough to follow the glance. 

If there _was_ a real spider, not just a convenient fiction of one, Clint couldn’t see it, and he said so. 

“Okay,” Coulson said, “just hold still a moment.” 

He unfolded himself, grimacing as if he’d been sitting cross-legged long enough for his calves to go numb, and went to his knees. With slow, careful movements, bracing himself with one hand, he reached across Clint’s chest. Clint found himself watching the stiff little shifts of Coulson's shoulders like they were some kind of secret code and he ought to know it. 

Coulson carefully didn’t watch him, intent on his own fingers as they dipped down into the little crevasse between Clint’s side and his elbow and brushed. Something skittered away down Clint’s forearm and Coulson retreated swiftly, folding back into himself and crossing his legs in the opposite direction. 

For a moment Clint thought that was it, Coulson’s well had finally dried up, and he was almost relieved. They’d sit in awkward silence for the rest of the night until the extraction team arrived and after that everything would go back to normal. 

Clint clearly had a lot to learn about Agent Phil Coulson, because after a moment he sighed and started talking again, picking at a dead patch of vegetation near his foot and beginning to break it into pieces.

“About three years before you came to SHIELD, Barton, I was finishing a hitch in Afghanistan-- a bad one. I came home with a real classic case of PTSD.”

Oh. Oh shit. Shit _shit_ shit. This was _not_ something Clint had fucking bargained on. He’d been trying to run _away_ from personal crap, and here he’d dropped them both right down an open manhole. Coulson was going to _kill_ him when he came back to his senses. Clint could only hope California was far enough away to hide.

And for some fucking reason, this was the moment Coulson chose to turn and look straight at Clint again, all intense like he had to make sure Clint was really _getting it_ or something. His face was half shadow and half fire, all twisted. Clint froze like a rabbit.

“I rode out the coming-home high for about three months," Coulson said. "Got back together with an ex and tried to play house. And then, well-- my mother died and I crashed. Hard." He flinched-- hopefully not at anything he saw in Clint's face-- and faltered a moment before continuing in a hard voice. "I tried to go to the VA for help, but that was... well, a clusterfuck. They _still_ haven't finished processing my fucking disability claim; be lucky if they do before I retire. Anyway, when Nick came to visit about six months in, he found me in… in a bad way. Half out of my mind, I think. Not a stretch to say he saved my life."

Coulson was somehow still watching him, despite having just confessed something which would have had Clint pretending his own shoelaces held the secrets of the universe-- or at least another spider. 

It was a really bad time for Coulson to be maintaining eye contact because Clint was simultaneously being horrified and having a _really_ overdue realization burst through the final barriers and come flooding out of his subconscious. He'd have given anything not to be staring right into Coulson's gaze, paralyzed, as he had it.

"So Fury what, recruited you into a spy organization and that got your head on right?" he asked. Which had to be the result of the concussion or the aforementioned horrible realizations overwhelming his never very high brain-to-mouth filter. 

"Basically, yes, eventually,” Coulson said, shrugging, as if Clint’s question hadn’t been stupidly rude. “Got me up, got me safe, got me help. Then took a risk and brought me on at SHIELD under the theory that I needed a job that would keep me on my toes. It was selfish of him, too, of course. He could keep his eye on me-- and he knew I’d have crawled on my knees for him. Don’t think for a moment Fury doesn’t have a half dozen reasons for everything he does. At any rate, that's why I'm here, and that's why of all the things on his list he wants to change, he started with psych.”

"Well thank you for that, I guess," Clint laughed, but it was a very bitter laugh; it burned coming out. Crawled on his knees. Clint could _picture it,_ and not because he had a good imagination. "I would have been out on my ass in six months without psych’s help.”

“You still going regularly?” 

Would the man stop _watching_ him already? Clint was starting to feel like the spider had come back for an encore performance on his face or something, the way Coulson’s eyes were flicking over him. He just needed a moment more, one last hard stare, before he could accept how much of an idiot he’d been for the last two years-- and Coulson was making it so damn hard for him to get it without looking like a jerk.

“Um, kinda? Not for this; I thought I had the drowning thing figured. Guess I was wrong." 

“There’s never any shame in it, Barton.” 

Coulson finally, _finally_ turned his head away for a brief check on the world outside the little bubble of fire and night they were suspended in. He quickly dismissed anything he saw as worthy of letting himself be distracted, and turned back to Clint with a calm and open face, but it was already too late.

Clint's head had finally popped out of his ass.

At least on _this_ issue.

“You survived a natural disaster," Coulson said, his voice a little less shaky now that he was bringing the conversation back onto Clint's turf, "one that a hell of a lot of people didn’t make it out of. You’re not weak just because you’re still dealing with it. In fact, I think it just makes you stronger.”

“Thanks,” Clint rasped. Was that in his file somehow? Had he ever given it away to someone other than Doc Heilman and that jackass Barrie? Or was he just that fucking transparent? How the hell did Coulson even know that Clint had picked up the drowning thing during Katrina? That had happened well after...

Yeah, fuck, he might as well say it out loud in his head, because fuck knew it wasn't going anywhere....

That had happened well after Miami. 

Oh, Clint saw better from a distance, sure, but apparently he'd needed to get up _really_ close-- and half-drown and have a meltdown and very possibly a concussion-- to see clearly this time. The firelight reflected off Senior Agent Phil Coulson's face exactly like the neon lights he'd watched blink across the smooth planes of the soldier Phillip's face as he'd slept in a sweat-soaked bed in a Miami motel room.

Coulson didn’t just _remind_ him of Phillip-- really, how dense could Clint be? Of course, of _course_ Coulson was Phillip himself. The same guy a brash, short-tempered, messed-up kid who called himself Chris had been smitten with, back when the world was young and so very fucked up. The same guy he’d spent the last two years convincing himself was just a kind of pale echo of someone in his daydreams. 

Daydreams where he’d he’d stupidly, short-sightedly, imagined Phillip might be out in a desert somewhere, waiting for Clint to swoop in and be impressive and adult and all agenty and finally prove Phillip's faith justified. 

Well, here they were in a desert, all right. Minus the swooping and the impressive competent agent-ness and plus a fucking _doozy_ of a headache. The world just really killed him sometimes, with its determination to have him step on his own dick at every opportunity.

He prayed to all the deities he didn't actually think fucking existed that Agent Coulson's vision was just as bad as Clint’s apparently was.

Sure it was; otherwise he would have said something, right? Or taken an interest before now? Coulson was never deliberately cruel. There would have been some kind of "just so you understand, the past doesn't affect our current professional relationship" bullshit which would have been especially mortifying since it would have taken Clint completely by surprise. 

So, no. He didn't know.

Small wonder, given Clint had been worn to the bone when Jasper had dragged him in to SHIELD. And he'd been so painfully young still in Miami. Must be little of Chris left in him now, maybe just a ghost that Coulson saw the way Clint'd seen Phillip in him-- if he remembered Chris at all, anyway.

It was a small favor, Coulson's obliviousness, but enough to get him through the worst of the shock.

Sometime while Clint was panicking internally he must have closed his eyes, because he opened them again to find that Coulson was getting up to go over and consult with Agent Collins, who was away beyond the fire still poking fitfully at the radio. 

She'd mostly succeeded in increasing the volume of the static, punctuated now by brief moments of something approaching aural lucidity. She lingered over one of those moments of partial reception, and a woman's voice slithered through the static, singing. _... Only nineteen for God's sake, you don't need a boyfriend...._

Clint hoped to fuck Coulson was shutting that down, or making Collins finish converting it to some actual communications use, because he was so very fucking done with the desert.

__

 

"Agent Collins," Phil growled, "either make that damned thing do something useful, or turn it off." 

To his dying day he’d swear it was the static, not the sudden soundtrack, that made him so abrupt.

Collins yelped as he came up behind her and spun to look at him him with eyes wide and nearly feral as they reflected in the firelight. Whatever she saw in his face must have convinced her not to argue, if not stunned her into silence. She shut off the radio with a shaking hand, then looked back down at it, shoulders slumping.

Phil had just enough Agent left in him to murmur something calming before he walked off into the night. 

He'd walked such a fine line for so many years, maintaining enough distance with Barton that no one-- especially not Barton himself-- could accuse him of favoritism. Barton had spent the last two years determinedly ignoring him outside of actual ops, a tactic Phil could only approve of. So what the hell had he thought he was doing reminding the man, even obliquely, that he had never once in their acquaintance been objective about him? Worse yet, he'd forced that familiarity on Barton when he was in a severely compromised state. 

Phil'd started out with the best of intentions, or at least he’d told himself that-- told himself that he had just been going to sit next to Barton and make sure he was okay, that he’d only woken him up because Barton’s nightmares were disturbing everyone around the fire. Hell, he could carry the story further and pretend he'd slipped just because Barton seemed so brittle lately. Or maybe because Barton had come so close to dying today, and Phil hadn't gone through all the work of finding him and then keeping the fuck away from him in order to have him drown in some damn wash somewhere southeast of Tucson. 

But the veneer of the lie was so thin it was already rubbing off. 

Everything Phil did that involved Barton had undercurrents, and he’d fought hard over the last two years to learn how to swim against them. It was disturbing to find himself caught in the undertow by something as simple as Barton finally, _finally_ using the name he'd once... _called._ The name he'd once called Phil by in Miami. Honestly? After that, he’d have had to sit down anyway before his knees gave out.

Phil stared out into the shadows that clustered around the base of the hill, creeping in and folding around them wherever the firelight petered out, and tried to convince himself he hadn’t just fucked up everything he’d spent two years building. 

Babbling out the issues he'd brought into SHIELD wasn't something entirely unique-- he'd done it in the past, albeit in a more controlled fashion. In a field like theirs nearly everyone was a potential PTSD risk, and he devoutly wished that someone had told _him_ that it was a normal response, back before he'd thought about eating a service pistol. Lacking the ability to jump through a wormhole (and if he could have, there were other things he’d have prevented first), Phil’d sworn that at least he could make sure no other agent ended up like him, even if it involved stirring up his own shit.

But Clint Barton wasn't any other agent, and not just in the sense of their shared nights. It was probably too much to ask that he wouldn't notice that the trouble that had broken Phil so badly he'd been discharged had happened only a few months after he'd been back in Afghanistan from his trip to Miami. The trip, the last good trip home, where he’d met a kid named Chris, taken him home and fucked him-- and found out too late that the kid’s business in town was assassination.

No, Phil really didn't need the uncomfortable questions, the ones that demanded explanations like "after you took out his uncle, Manshour Abdul-Rauf came a little unglued." And he didn't want to _ask_ the uncomfortable questions that'd built up in the pit of his stomach for years, the ones like “was it running from us that got you caught in the storm?”

Behind him, Phil was aware that Sitwell had gone back to check on Barton and was now wandering over, hands tucked into the belt of his field suit.

Well, hell.

"Sir," Jasper said softly as he came.

"Jasper, _really_ ," Phil growled, because he was done and past done with "sir" today. He usually endured it well, but good _god_ , did everyone really need to remind him that he had their lives in his hands every time they spoke to him? He remembered it damn well already.

"I-- oh. Phi-- Coulson. Sorry.” Jasper took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “This fucking mission. I’m not sure I’m going to survive it.”

“You don’t get a choice,” Phil told him, looking him over. 

Jasper was nearly as battered as Barton-- Phil was glad he hadn’t been there to watch the idiot rappel down a canyonside in the rain-- and holding himself like he’d stiffen up if he stopped moving for a half minute. Sympathy at the moment would probably just collapse him. 

“Everybody gets back,” Phil told him. “No matter how much you might want to avoid having to make reservations at the last minute.”

“Fuck,” Jasper said, with feeling. “We’re cutting it close, aren’t we? Goddamnit. I promised Cecelia this would wrap in time for our anniversary. First one since the we got back together, she wants to make it special, show we’re starting fresh, that kind of thing. She is _not_ going to be happy. Too bad Clint’s the one that got hurt; a few cracked ribs would’ve bought me a day or two. Think I can order flowers from the evac chopper?”

“Evac chopper, Agent Sitwell?” Phil asked, straightening. 

“Uh,” Sitwell blinked, clearly running his last words through his head. “Yeah. That’s… sorry, I got distracted a minute. Thought I'd let you know Collins finally got through to someone over at the Slingshot, and we're going to have evac real soon."

"Oh thank god," Phil said, feeling his stomach unclench a little. "How're our injured?"

"You mean Barton?" Sitwell shrugged. "Asleep, or faking it real well. I'm ready to get him back to medical and checked out. Hopefully before he has any more nightmares. Thanks for sitting with him-- that was… the muttering was starting to get on Mel’s nerves."

"Mmm. Did you know about it? That floods were a trigger?"

"Me? No. If he told his psych that's more than he told anyone else. Figure he would have if he thought it was going to be a problem, but…” Sitwell frowned down at his boots, so coated in mud they nearly disappeared into the ground, “but then again this is Clint. He’s one shit-ton better, but… he’s still kinda like a chipmunk, right? He hoards his emotional shit, and you can see his little cheeks bulging, you know something’s in there, but he won’t spit it out. This Bobbi thing, I-- Agent?” Jasper dropped his hands in the middle of gesturing wildly at his own cheeks, and turned to Agent Collins, who’d come up behind him as he talked. He hunched back in on himself, as if he hadn’t just been making poofy chipmunk faces.

She joined them, echoing their exhausted stances, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her vest.

“Bad news, chopper pilot says we’ve got to move. He can’t meet us here.”

“He what?” Phil snapped, and Sitwell’s voice was a close echo. Collins flinched. Christ, he was going to have to buy her a big fruit basket or something when all this was over.

“I didn’t follow completely. He was saying SHIELD thinks there are still hostiles-- or maybe it was new hostiles-- active in the area, and doesn’t want to alert anyone with the noise of the chopper. Plus we’re on the wrong side of the mountain or some bullshit like that. We need to move about a mile east-- I’ve got coordinates.”

Phil glanced at Sitwell, to find him looking back. It didn’t need anything like the weight of history they had together for Phil to read his face, and it was _eloquent_ in what it thought about chopper pilots and SHIELD’s pansy-ass ops control center staff, not to mention the effect of dark nights, loose rocks, and stealthy cacti on twisted ankles and tired agents.

“Yes, fine,” Phil said, and caught himself rubbing his fingers through the thinning hair at his temples. “We wouldn’t want to _inconvenience_ our pilots.” 

Arguing would only take up valuable time. Everyone except Sitwell and Barton was damp and exhausted, and probably sore in places they’d only find after they’d slept about twelve hours. Sitwell was flat-out bedraggled, and Barton, well…. He looked over at Barton, still a lonely lump by the fire.

“Someone’s going to have to help him,” Sitwell said softly, and Phil nodded. 

“Can he walk, do you think? With help?”

“Yeah.” 

Sitwell paused, watching Phil expectantly. Behind them, Collins had roused May, and the two of them were packing up their makeshift camp and dousing the fire, their movements slow and imprecise. In front of him, Sitwell drooped, his eyes huge and limpid in the fire, skin dull. 

_When did Sitwell learn how to look like a damned puppy?_ Phil thought. It seemed unfair-- probably Barton had taught him-- but resenting it wouldn’t make any difference. They needed Collins on the radio, May needed to be free to move if someone attacked them on the way, and Sitwell had only saved an agent’s life earlier that morning by moving an entire dead tree. Fresh as a fucking daisy.

“All right,” Phil sighed. “I’ll limp him along. You wake him up, okay?” 

Well, he’d broken so many of his own boundaries with Barton already, what was one more? 

\---

Phillip-- _Coulson_ , definitely Coulson and not Phillip at all, and Clint's brain needed to shut the fuck up before it embarrassed him further-- had trained a flashlight on the ground as they limped along down the slope towards the new extraction point. Clint had been watching the little splash of blue-white light as it bobbed just ahead of them intently, his entire world narrowed down to the flaky ground they stumbled over, skirting prickly pear and barrel cactus and once or twice a deceptively fuzzy cholla. 

It was claustrophobic in the little puddle of light, but Clint was determined not to look up. Looking up would mean noticing that Coulson’s breath came heavy on the side of his neck, and that was dangerous. Hell, if was nearly as dangerous as if he'd been stupid enough to notice the pressure of Coulson's fingers against Clint’s already aching ribs, the shifts of muscle in his chest whenever he tried to drape Clint more firmly against him, the tension in the shoulders under Clint's elbow. 

And now Clint was trying to remember if he'd ever _touched_ Coulson before, for more than a handshake-- except maybe in memories, on a wet street in Miami, thick with the smell of salt and sewage and the sea, the night they’d both drunk a little more than usual, the last night they’d stumbled together back to Phillip’s motel room. 

And see? That, that right there, was the problem. If he let it linger for a fucking moment, Clint's mind would run off on him down too many trampled paths. If he'd known, if he'd only known who Coulson _was_ from the start, he'd have tried to engage in some of that exposure therapy Dr. H. loved, before it came to _this_ trying to keep his head together while Phillip half-dragged and half-cuddled him to safety.

Not that the present was any better. The desert at night was cold and wide and Clint shivered, his metallic blanket left far behind.

“Barton?”

Coulson’s voice sounded like it came from very far away, even though Clint could feel the shift of his jaw as he spoke. It shattered the little protective dome of light Clint'd built around his thoughts. 

“‘M all right, si… Coulson. ‘M all right," Clint answered the worry in his voice.

He might be wet and bruised, have a headache that went on for miles, and just generally be miserable, but no fucking way he was gonna lay any of that on Coulson. It wasn’t Coulson’s fault Clint’s janky-ass luck had landed them all in this mess.

“Okay," Coulson said, "just… let me know if-- yeowch!” 

The yelp of pain was followed immediately by Coulson flailing backwards and dropping the flashlight. 

Where Coulson went so did Clint, seeing as he'd kind of depended on the man to stay upright. Clint flailed a bit himself, finally ending up falling on his ass onto a bit of rocky slope. Which promptly crumbled beneath his butt, sliding him down the hill a yard. Clint gave up at that point and flopped over. 

Beside him, Coulson finished detaching himself from the embrace of a particularly ardent saguaro, whose arms he must have wandered into while focused on Clint. It seemed far too _private_ a dance for Clint to watch; and it only got worse as Coulson rubbed himself all over, looking for spines.

Clint turned his head upwards instead and promptly gasped.

“Chr-- Barton?” Coulson asked, tumbling onto his knees and reaching out. “What happened?”

Clint couldn’t speak. He was too fixated on the starscape above him.

While he’d been concentrating on the ground in front of his feet the clouds had departed and the stars had come out, so thick in the deep purple sky they looked, to his midwestern eye, like scattered milkweed.

“Holy fuck,” he said, and pointed upwards. Coulson followed his gaze, and Clint felt as much as heard the breath leave him.

“I forget, sometimes,” Coulson whispered, and left it there.

“Agent Coulson? Agent Barton?” May’s voice drifted to them from somewhere off down the trail. “Did someone forget to tell us it was naptime?”

“C’mon,” Coulson muttered, and pulled Clint to his feet then draped Clint right back across his shoulder. 

Clint kept his head tilted upwards as they started to walk again, steps faltering until he managed to match his pace to Coulson's again. A meteor-- or maybe a falling satellite-- streaked across his vision.

“Y’know,” he said, watching it, “I remember skies in Mexico like this, kinda. Montana. Couple other places. It just always... I can’t… you don't get used to it. Don't remember it right till you see it again or something."

“I know,” Coulson said, voice rumbly. “Afghanistan was like this, in the mountains.”

“Yeah?” 

Clint did not, he really did _not_ look at Coulson. He looked _past_ Coulson at the hills beyond him, spiked with forked saguaros and clusters of organ pipe. (And if he just kept on avoiding Coulson like this, he was gonna be a bona fide naturalist by the time they hit the extraction point.)

“Yeah,” Coulson replied, and after a moment, wistfully, “it took me years to want to see it again.”

“But now you do?” Clint asked, and got the shrug he figured the question deserved. 

They walked along in silence a while longer before Clint found himself looking up again. Maybe it was just the hit to the head, the weakness in his lungs and limbs, but it felt like the sky pulsed.

“Damn it’s creepy,” he said, and Coulson snorted.

“Get used to it,” he replied. “The Sonoran goes all the way to California. Gonna see a lot of this.”

“I’m gonna be in _LA_ , Coulson. Can’t see any stars there.”

“Can’t you?”

It took Clint a moment to figure out why Coulson’s voice had suddenly gone light, like he was smiling.

“Oh,” he groaned when he got it. “Goddamnit, man, don't pun when I’m in a weakened state.”

“It was a weak pun, Barton,” Coulson replied, chuckling in a way that had unexpected undertones of neon lights and squeaky bedsprings. The _fucker_. He wasn’t supposed to still have that voice, after all this time. “I take it you don’t care about the stars?”

“Eh,” Clint said, offhand as he could manage while he was busy trying to adjust himself without the man holding him up noticing, “not really why I’m going to California.”

That seemed to dry up the conversational well a bit. They shuffled vaguely downhill in silence, and Clint continued to watch either his feet or the ridgeline. Now that he was looking up he could just see May silhouetted against the sky in front of them.

“Why-- apart from Agent Morse-- _are_ you going to California?”

Coulson’s question was so quiet Clint nearly didn’t catch it at all.

When he did, he stiffened.

“She’s not a good enough reason?” he asked.

“Barton,” Coulson sighed-- or was that a Phillip sigh? It sounded like one, all frayed at the edges. “She’s a fine agent. I’m not... in a position to judge anything else. But moving just for one person rarely works out well. There’s not much for you in California.”

“You said so before,” Clint said after a minute, which he spent counting the patches of tiny white flowers that were dotting the path by his feet, sparse among the sand and rock, hoping Coulson would change the subject. “Does this mean you'll miss me, sir?” 

He bit his lip nearly as soon as it was out. Fuck his habit of jumping off cliffs and hoping gravity’d stop working for once, he could _feel_ the fall coming.

“You aren’t here because I needed to work on my upper body strength,” Coulson drawled, flexing the arm that was holding Clint to demonstrate just how true that was, as outwardly calm as if Clint hadn’t just shoved both their faces in his mess of insecurity. “You’ve got skills few other agents have, Barton.” 

His voice faltered just on the end of Clint's name, and it only made Clint blush harder, caught between the unexpected praise and the accidental innuendo. If he stumbled just then, it wasn’t because of his knees, or the sudden buzzing in his head, it was just the exhaustion. 

Coulson noticed and shifted a little underneath Clint’s arm, like he thought Clint was in danger of slipping out of his grip. Clint couldn’t exactly explain how little this would help him regain any kind of balance, so he did his best to straighten up within the circle of Coulson’s arm. If only he could manage to wriggle his way into something that didn’t resemble a cuddle quite so closely.

“If you need a sniper, sir, I can still be on call sometimes, right?” he offered, trying to get them back to the point.

Coulson was silent next to him, except for a little grunt that proved he’d heard the question. Maybe he hadn’t meant that as an invitation after all… or maybe he thought Clint didn’t think anyone else was good enough for his place on the team. (They _weren’t_ , but Clint didn't have the right to say so anymore.)

“I mean, if you need someone better than the usual,” he clarified, then swallowed as he realized that hadn't helped. “I mean, we have a lot of good snipers, I just… you said.…” Fuck trying to talk with a head injury, anyway. Possible head injury. What _ever_.

Coulson shook his head reflexively, his jaw going tight.

“You don’t need to be modest with me about your marksmanship, Barton, heavens know you aren’t with anyone else. And you’ve got every right to brag-- you're in a class of your own at SHIELD or... or anywhere, really. But I don’t have any use on my teams for someone who’s _just_ a marksman, not even just the World’s Greatest Marksman. If you were only a half ways decent shot, you’d still be hard for me to replace. As it is, it’s... going to be well-nigh impossible.” 

As he talked, Coulson’s voice got tighter and higher. At the end of his speech he huffed and used his hip to heave Clint upwards like an awkward grocery sack. Clint fought back a whimper.

“Sorry, sir?” he tried, and wished he could slump back down again into Coulson’s hold; he could see too much of the man’s face this way, the shift and play of the shadows and the way his lips pressed tight together. “But your team will be all right, right? I mean, as long as you’re in charge, I can’t imagine you not taking care of… of them.”

Crap, there he went again. _Aw, mouth._ He was half-imagining Phillip in the desert with his troops again, kind of superimposed on top of Agent Coulson in his office, and it didn’t help at all.

“The team will survive,” Coulson admitted gruffly before turning his head away. “But you, Barton. I’m not sure you realize how much you mean to the team, to… everyone. You, ah-- Sitwell’s going to miss you a lot. You know that-- you _should_ know that. But that’s not… I’m not worried about him as much as I’m, as he…. He’s worried about you.”

A stuttering Coulson. That was a first.

“He is?” Clint asked, but he meant _you are_? It seemed fucking impossible-- but then, he was stumbling along under a fantastic sky with Phillip’s arm around his waist, so what the hell did he know?

“None of us want to see you in a position where--” Coulson paused, clearly measuring his words, his fingers splaying out against Clint’s ribs like they were buttressing the bones. “It would be concerning to see…. In California, you’ll be starting over, and you’ve put so much work into…. I’m sorry, this isn’t…. You’ll be leaving your support network… your work, your _proper_ work, I don’t think you’ve fully considered… damnit.” 

“Sir?” There wasn’t a damn thing else to say; he’d never seen anything like this from Coulson-- or Phillip, for that matter. If he hadn’t been so damn miserable, he might not have been quite so terrified, but he needed Coulson to be there and solid for just a little longer.

Coulson huffed something like the ghost of a laugh, his face so close to Clint’s now that the sigh was moist against his ear. Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howled and Sitwell cursed. 

“You’re going to be miserable,” Coulson hissed, words coming out in a rush. “You know it and we know it. Stupid to pretend we don’t, damnit. California is going to waste you, it’s going to bore you, and you deserve a hell of a lot better than that. And whatever happened with you and Agent Morse, you look like you’ve sentenced yourself to hard labor whenever you talk about your future life together-- which doesn’t seem fair to her. Why?” 

And then, right at the end, he punctuated the whole thing with something that sounded like a cut-off apology, and fell silent. The long line of his body, uncomfortably clammy against Clint’s by now, had gone stiff with tension.

_Jesus fuck_ , Clint thought, _I thought I was the one who made like Wile E. Coyote in this joint._

He could tell Coulson was waiting for Clint to let him splat, but Clint’d picked up an unfortunate habit of trying to save Phillip's ass, and apparently it’d stuck. (Okay, so he'd only done it the once-- but once was clearly enough to get him hooked.)

“‘Cause… ‘cause I owe it to her to try and fix shit,” Clint answered at last. He felt Coulson relax beneath his arm as he realized Clint wasn’t going to tell him off for getting involved. The knots in his own shoulders began to loosen as well.

“No one owes anyone being miserable,” Coulson told him.

Clint opened his mouth to argue, felt a whimper rising, and shut it again fast.

The certainty in that statement was so Coulson but he said it with a vehemence that was pure Phillip. For the first time that night, Clint was grateful no one expected him to be fully coherent.

“It’s not like that,” he said finally, hoping his voice didn’t sound as thick to Coulson as it did to him. “But if it was like that, if I was gonna be miserable, it’s only fair-- I made her miserable first.” _So there._

The sound Coulson made was something between an interrogative hum and a worried sort of sigh, clearly not accepting the period Clint had tried to put to the conversation-- and just as clearly willing to wait Clint out and let the silence break him.

It was a dirty tactic, and it wasn’t fucking fair of Coulson to pull it out now. Clint’d already fucked it up with Bobbi enough. He’d already fucked up tonight enough. Did he really have to lose the last of his dignity in Phillip’s eyes, too?

Well Clint’d made his bed when he'd lost it at Bobbi. Time to lie down and take what he had coming.

Anyway Coulson-- who’d taken a chance on Clint and Jasper, pulled them for his team when they were both so new to the roles of specialist and supervising agent that their voices still squeaked-- deserved to know why Clint was leaving him. 

(And so did Phillip-- even if Phillip didn’t know it was Chris doing the leaving-- again.)

“It was all my fault,” Clint whispered into Coulson’s collar, his head sinking against his will. “I know that. Knew it even while i was busy fucking it all up, even, I just couldn’t stop it. Wasn't Bobbi’s fault at all… she was in a really bad place and I just made it worse. I don’t do well when, um.... I don’t do well when I can’t do anything but watch from a distance. Ironic, yeah? And this time I couldn’t even do that, and so I got mad, and I fucked it all up and I let Bobbi down.”

“How do you think you failed her?” Coulson asked, and Clint winced.

_Goddamnit Bobbi, is that all I am to you? Just another one of your marks? A... a... a convenient lay?_ In the back of his brain, something had been whispering at him that it wouldn't be the first time. That at least this one hadn't left him bloody-handed in the middle of enemies.

But Bobbi had never deserved that comparison. So chalk that one up in the failure column.

Didn’t take a genius to make up that list. Clint added a couple, just for the hell of it: he'd been stupidly blind to the fact that she was hurting so badly. He hadn't treated her well enough to gain her trust.

(Doc H. had said that it probably wasn't about trust at all, that often victims were ashamed to talk about it. But Bobbi had never been ashamed of anything in her life and Doc H. hadn’t been there to hear Bobbi hiss out _well look how well you're handling it now!_ )

And that was the most damning-- that when she _did_ tell him finally, he blew them both up, ranting on and on about how she was going to ruin her own career too and she should have let him help and it never had to come to this. 

Clint switched from looking at his own boots to Coulson’s, tucking his head under Coulson’s jaw and letting them both stumble on under the starlight for a while, as he tried to figure out how to start the story.

\----

They were just about halfway to their new extraction point, by Phil’s estimation, when Barton curled up until his chin was digging into Phil’s collarbone. After a few moments where Phil felt both their breaths come short, he began to talk-- or at any rate mumble.

Phil’d been sure, the moment previous, that Barton had finally walled him off, driven Phil back out of his life-- which would have been absolutely his right. And then, he was too stunned by the hot breath ghosting over his collar to register Clint’s voice for a long second. When he did start processing words, he nearly immediately wished he hadn’t.

“-- shouldn’t say his name I guess, even though he got shitcanned. Dunno if you heard about it. Bobbi… she was the one who reported him. It’d… she said it’d been months that he’d been,” Clint swallowed, and Phil tensed, “ _bothering_ her. Like, harassment. I mean, not just shit like checking out her boo-- uh, cleavage, either. Real slimy... he deserved an asskicking. Still not sure why she didn't just stab him in the kidney when he... no. I can’t… I don’t want to describe…”

“You shouldn’t,” Phil cut him off. “Sexual harassment cases are never talked about outside of the investigation, for everyone’s sake.”

“Sorry,” Clint said, “I know. But I can’t--” he shrugged again, shifting in Phil's arms.

Phil glanced at his bowed head, hair nearly silver in the moonlight, and thought distinctly _I don’t think I can survive this._

“No, it’s all right,” he forced himself to say. “You’re all right, you didn’t say anything..." What? He hadn't said anything wrong? Anything damning? No, all he'd done was make Phil feel like a damn blind fool. "That’s all I need to know about that.” 

In fact, confidentiality protocols or not, he knew which senior agent had abruptly departed earlier in the fall. He’d even had suspicions _why_ \-- gut instinct only, but apparently he needed to pay more attention to that twist of intestine. If he’d only known the man had hurt one of his people (not really his, according to their supervisors, a fact that had never cut so deep).

If he'd _known_ , Phil might have been able to take care of things before they'd compromised two of his best agents. 

Still, it had been absolutely Agent Morse's right not to tell Phil, just like it had been her right not to tell--

“-- and I know, I know, she didn’t have to tell me, right?" Barton muttered, as if he was somehow in Phil's head. "I mean Doc Heilman even said it wasn’t _me_ , it’s really common, and Bobbi said she was just trying to protect me, keep me from getting caught in the middle. It’s just… at the time? When she told me, it was just after she gave testimony, went before the mediator, d’you see?”

Phil saw, all right. 

_I don't want your help. I'll do this myself_ Chris had yelled at him, back in Miami, and he'd taken it so much better, hadn't he? No, he'd only taken it personally and sulked pretty much up until an RPG knocked it out of his head. 

“It’s natural to wonder why someone you love didn’t ask you for help with something like that, C--Barton,” he said.

“Is it _natural_ to explode on them? Yell and scream ‘till they crumple up into… into a… Jesus. I’m sorry, sir. I just… I couldn’t stop myself. Knew it while the words were coming out and I… and I… I knew I lost her. I deserved to lose her. It wasn’t her, even. I just… I was mad at her because I didn’t fucking protect her. Mad at me. ‘S stupid.”

_Probably_ , Phil thought, _but that never stopped me either._

He just tended to yell in the echo chamber of his own head.

“See?” Barton’s voice barely made it out of Phil’s collar this time, and though his voice was light his body hung heavy, nearly slipping out of Phil’s grasp. “Not such a loss after all, am I?”

“Don’t be absurd, Barton,” Phil heard himself growl, and snapped his teeth shut, forcing himself to take a deep breath. “You made a mistake in an emotionally fraught situation. You didn’t blow an op.” 

As his hackles slowly smoothed back down, Phil realized Barton had gone stiff in his arms. Hell. What had he said wrong? Had that been too intense? Too personal? Had he let the mask slip too far?

“Yeah, I suppose that’s all that counts,” Barton muttered.

Ah. 

Phil squeezed him absently while trying to decide what tack to take.

“Of course it isn’t,” he settled on, and then added cautiously. “And you and Agent Morse must have reconciled, if you’re going to California? So I imagine she must see something worth keeping, too.”

He felt Barton’s laugh more than heard it. Even his breath felt bitter.

“Yeah, yeah, Bobbi is… she’s a saint. I called May, where she was staying, and Bobbi said she’d give me my shot at convincing her. So I went over and just... laid it all out, you know? Just one chance, I’d never hurt her again… which is a fucking lie, I can’t help fucking hurting people, it’s kinda… it’s kinda the story of my life. You, um, well… you know.”

_I really don’t_ , Phil wanted to say. Wanted to say _but you can tell me,_ wanted even more to say _oh look, is that a cactus I see? Huh!_

“Oh, look,” Barton said, and Phil nearly laughed at the echo of his own thoughts, until Barton completed his sentence. “Who’s that on the ridge?”


	3. Chapter 3

Clint had taken to saguaro-counting on the heights as they walked-- anything to keep his mind off the way he seemed to have cracked open, leaking all his weaknesses out through his lips. Was it Phillip he was laying himself open for, or was Coulson just that good at… at playing amateur therapist or whatever he thought he was doing?

(Anything to keep from noticing how strong Coulson’s arm was at his back.)

The cacti made a long line of sentinels, cut-outs against the speckled sky. After a while he’d decided they were watching the passage of the SHIELD agents through their home; urging them on and _out_.

_'Salright,_ Clint had thought at them, _we'll be out of your hair soon. Prickles. Spines-- whatever. We'll go._ Fuck the desert anyway, the desert clearly hated him and he was starting to come around to hating it, too.

Still, he hadn’t felt uncomfortable with the vegetal sentries-- at least, not until one of them moved.

Which had to be a hallucination, and it wasn't like he didn't have a fuckin' head injury or anything. 

He ignored it, in favor of nearly having a heart attack over the fact that he'd just admitted to Phillip that he'd failed Bobbi in about the most spectacular fashion ever.

The second time, he thought it was a trick of the night-- just a shift in the shadow. Anyway, he was busy having the breath crushed out of him by Phillip’s sudden squeeze.

The third time, the _third_ time he couldn’t ignore it any longer, because that wasn't a fucking saguaro, it was too damn short and it had just stepped into place while Clint was looking straight at it. 

“Oh look,” he said, “who’s that on the ridge?”

Coulson nearly dropped him in his haste to get at his gun.

He didn't bother with finesse, just called Jasper and May and Collins to him.

"Barton's seen watchers," he said-- and clearly everyone was insane as Coulson that night, because none of them reminded him that Clint had been hallucinating hurricanes a short while ago, they just nodded and pulled out their own sidearms.

"I really miss my bow 'bout now," Clint said, his only current halfway-useful contribution.

"So do we," Coulson replied absently. "So do we."

\----

Once he'd started seeing Barton's shadows lurking about the ridgelines, dark against dark, Phil couldn't stop seeing them. Either their watchers had decided to stop hiding, or he'd just seen the boat in the magic eye picture, but now Phil saw them behind every cactus. They shifted, sometimes far away, and then suddenly a couple halfway down the slope, lurking behind particularly sturdy saguaros, as the little SHIELD group rushed past.

Because the only thing missing from this happy little nighttime stroll they were taking had been a vague, undefined threat. Just fucking peachy, as Barton would have said. (Hell, as Barton had probably thought.)

The little group of agents weren't bothering to be careful of their footing now and they'd all drawn in on each other in a defensive formation. May led the way with Collins and Sitwell in the rear and Phil humping Barton along in the middle of the cluster. Barton had one arm around his shoulders still, clutching tightly to his tac vest, and Phil kept his gun in his free hand. 

The pace May set was so quick that sometimes Barton dragged along for several steps, pulling further out of his hold before Phil stopped to gather him back. He seemed to be fading out again, because he was mumbling from time to time. 

Phil cursed under his breath; he needed Barton’s eyes and his brain in the present, goddamnit, not drowning in Bobbi and remorse. Not that it was Barton’s fault-- given everything, it was a miracle he was even conscious.

"Who the hell are these guys?" Sitwell asked Phil as they trotted, his breath shaky. "They don't seem like hostiles from our mission."

"Dunno," Phil said briefly, "maybe just locals we stirred up."

"Sir," Collins' voice was uncertain, "I've got SHIELD back on my comm. They're asking d'you want to change the evac point? There's another option about a half mile further east south east?"

Phil thought about that a moment, weighing the possibility they could escape their so-far passive watchers versus the longer trip.

"We're fine," he said, and a rock hit his feet.

He figured he probably should have seen that one coming.

"Incoming!" Barton called, twisting in his arms as more stones came flying at them. They came from all directions, bouncing off the dirt at their feet, the nearby cactuses, Sitwell's shoulder. 

Sitwell’s yelp was confirmation enough that the pelting wasn’t meant to be _playful_ in any sense of the word.

"Goddamnit," Phil found himself yelling back at the hills, "we're nearly gone! Leave us alone!"

The stones actually-- much to his confusion-- stopped for a moment. 

"That was too easy," he mumbled, looking around and trying to spot some kind of movement on the heights.

Sure enough another stone; this one more of a junior boulder, crashed into the path just behind them. 

"What do we do, sir, just go faster?" Collins asked, and Phil opened his mouth to answer.

"They never came," Barton said dreamily, cutting him off. 

"Who never came?" Phil asked.

"The buses. We asked and asked but they never came. Tried to come, you see, but they got turned back on the bridges. Never did make it, had to make our own way."

He must be back in New Orleans again in his mind, Phil realized. Hell and death, what perfectly shit timing.

Barton was still looking around him, floppy-necked, and as Phil watched he caught a rock that had been headed past his face and flung it back.

Whatever it hit, it hit unerringly-- a shadow shuddered in the darkness and collapsed, and none of them lingered to see if it got back up. 

_Turned back at all the bridges_ , Phil thought, and made his choice.

"New course, Collins. Lead us there. Let's not risk waiting to see if a heli really has been dispatched to the old evac point while our friends here practice their aim." 

She nodded grimly and muttered into her earpiece, then pointed down a secondary spur just coming into view in the foothills. The team set off. 

At first, the watchers kept pace, flitting along the ridgeline and lobbing the occasional rock. A sharp turn down a kind of side-ridge finally left them behind. The SHIELD agents un-turtled a little, and reduced the zig and zag of their course. Phil clutched Barton tighter to him as they picked up speed-- the man had been up and down so much already tonight that it came as little surprise when he started to fade again as soon as the immediate danger had passed. 

They crossed the desert quickly, flashlights bobbing beneath the dome of stars, and all the saguaros stood motionless behind them.

Phil was just foolishly-- he'd be the first to admit it-- believing that they'd left the worst behind them when he heard it: the rush and burble of running water, somewhere off in front of him. He didn't even have time to hope Barton hadn't heard it; he felt the man's full-body tremor as it hit.

"It's all right," Phil muttered to him, pulling him along still, "maybe it'll just be alongside us, maybe you won't have to cross. No sense borrowing trouble. C'mon. One foot in front of the other, Agent."

If he could just keep Barton _moving_ maybe inertia would do the rest. After a moment of hesitation Barton complied, but his body seemed colder. Not shock, that was the last thing they needed, please and thank you, universe.

In his periphery, Phil noticed Sitwell getting closer to them as the sound of water grew louder. Good-- he was probably much more the kind of moral support Barton would need than Phil himself could be. But Sitwell was not, it turned out, sidling up to them to make Phil's life _easier_.

"They're back," he muttered, "I see shadows moving on the ridge at five o'clock."

"Let's hurry it up then," Phil muttered back. "No need to pretend we don't see them. Everybody," he called out loud, " _run_." 

Run they did, even Barton, even with his busted everything, half-stumbling down the little track. Howls started up behind them as they tumbled downhill, and then to either side, overlapping each other. Occasionally one of them turned into a sort of keening nearly on the edge of decipherable sound. 

Still they heard and saw nothing in front of them to worry about-- until they hit the wash.

"No," Barton moaned as he saw it, running fast and secretive along its banks, so barren it must be another of the desert's many sometimes-streams. Phil was inclined to agree with Barton's assessment. 

May waded in without stopping, only looking back midway through to grab Collins and begin dragging her over.

"It's not that deep," she called as she went, "and the footing's steady. Just come _on_ , we're almost there." 

Phil had no doubt she’d said it to reassure Barton, without seeming to single him out. Bless her, no other commanding officer was ever getting a hand on her _again._

Still, Barton didn't move a muscle until she'd safely made the far side, her tac suit clinging to her from mid-torso on down where it had gotten soaked. Once she was safely across he let Phil drag him forward, till he was standing with his toes nearly in the water. He was shivering hard, rolling his head against Phil's neck, and Phil fought not to pull away when his cold nose made contact. 

"This isn’t gonna work; need another… need to go back, go around," he mumbled into Phil’s skin, breath hot. Phil pushed away the memories that had been crowding thickly behind him, of Chris shaking in his arms, all his naked skin turned pale in the moonlight.

"There's no other way," Phil replied quietly, deliberately erasing all trace of fear from his voice. If he couldn’t get Chris-- Barton. _Barton_ \-- across, what would they do? Stumble away (again) and get lost in the wilderness? Sit there and wait for the water to go down or the shadows to crawl up? “You have to make it.”

Barton looked up, cocking his head towards the hills as a high, ululating howl punctuated Phil’s statement. The howls-- Phil still wasn't entirely certain they whether they were coyote or human, since neither made any sense-- had been increasing since they’d reached the wash, echoes creeping further and further down the shallow valley.   
"Can't do it.” The statement was matter of fact but Barton looked trapped, starting to fidget a little, trying to get loose from Phil without making it obvious. 

"It's okay, Clint, you got this," Sitwell called. He'd fallen behind just a little-- victim of a lightly twisted ankle-- and was limping towards them as fast as he could. "We got no choice-- we’ve got to go on. We’ll do it together, okay, bud? I’ll be right there. Let us help."

"Always a choice," Barton muttered. He was moving from shivering to outright shaking and his voice skirled higher with each choppy sentence. "Don't _gotta_ do anything. Don’t wanna hold you back. It’s all right, it’s all right, you guys get out. I’ll… I’ll take care of this. Find another way or… or… just, I dunno. Always another way. Don’t have to come with. Just leave me here, huh?" 

“You’re not going anywhere without us,” Sitwell yelled, and Barton glared at him hard enough a lesser man would have been knocked to the ground. Phil _knew_ that glare preceded the words _have a good life_ , preceded him walking out.

He’d seen it before.

“Don’t need help. I c’n… I can do this myself.” 

Phil’s arms tightened reflexively, trying to hold him in place. 

And then Barton froze. Phil felt the change run up and down his body and knew the moment he made the decision. Every molecule of him was trying to pull away from the safety Phil was offering.

"Gimme your gun," Barton said, and Phil blinked, because what the hell good would a gun do except if he was really planning on--

"Chris," Phil breathed, "no." 

_I worked too damn hard to get you back safe to have you disappear again._ For good, most likely-- the odds of him surviving alone in the desert, in his state, with hostiles all around, were practically nil. Might as well just turn the damned gun on himself. 

For the first time since he'd mentioned Bobbi Morse, Barton looked straight at Phil, caught and held his gaze. 

"I have a shot, sir," he said, nearly a whisper. “I do. You trust me?”

_You trust me?_ Chris had asked him long ago, laughter in his eyes, liquid hips grinding against him, the only living thing in a club full of people so unreal they might as well have been shadows.

It wasn’t Chris leaning heavily against his side now, so close Phil could have stuffed his hand in a back pocket like he had then-- it was Clint Barton, the man who had grown out of that boy. Who had managed to pull himself out of far worse situations than this.

If Phil’d arguably been an idiot to trust Chris (and even considering the end of the affair, he couldn’t believe he had been), Clint Barton had proven himself worthy of trust over and over again-- had returned Phil’s trust by laying himself open just that night.

Phil made himself unlock his limbs and pressed the gun into Clint’s hand, swallowing hard as he did. It hurt to breathe, so he stopped.

Clint straightened, threw his head up, and raised the gun. He pivoted out of Phil's grip and fired all in one fluid movement, barely bothering to sight.

Sitwell went still as Clint brought the gun to bear on him, but that was all the reaction he had time for in the split instant before the bullet whizzed past his cheek. He stood motionless, face frozen in open-mouthed shock, as a body fell, thumping heavily, just behind him. It crumpled to the ground. Its limbs, which had been open in mid-leap when the bullet hit, collapsed in on themselves.

The howls cut off, mid-yodel.

Sitwell spun, and Phil could see a dark head just within the circle of his flashlight beam.

"Just... just a coyote," Sitwell said after a moment, poking at the shag with his foot. 

"Was about to attack," Barton replied, and Sitwell nodded without looking at him.

"We have to go," Phil said, jolting Sitwell out of his stare. Phil thought he looked shaken and didn’t blame him at all-- Phil himself felt so drawn he was sure he was going to tear in two if they couldn’t get some respite soon.

"Yeah, yeah," Sitwell said after a moment, coming up to join them. He looked straight into Barton's eyes, raising one eyebrow in inquiry.

Barton gulped.

"Let's do this?" he said, and his voice was terribly young.

"Are you going to be all right, Clint?" Phil asked, wondering if he and Sitwell could just chair-carry Barton across. He as answered with a quick shake and shiver, and Barton settled himself back in Phil’s embrace-- er, hold. 

"It's... fine.” Barton muttered. “It's... I'll just let you guys take me across, right?” Phil felt himself hum in acquiescence, too low to hear over the rushing water. “You and Jas... I'll hang on for you, sir. I… I trust you."

Either the moonlight was especially intense, or Barton had gone paper-white. Phil was more than half convinced he had too.

"All right, let's go," he said quietly. 

\----

The water rushed in his ears and the stars came down and blinded him. 

Clint squeezed his eyes shut, narrowing his world down one sense at a time. Sight, at least, he could afford to lose. No choice on feeling, no way he could shut out the cold, heavy water. It swamped his boots, turning them to lead, yanked at his ankles, ballooned the bottom of his pants beneath while plastering to them above the surface, tried to tear him into pieces at the waterline, where water met air, down deep where water met earth. 

Scent next. The air smelled of creosote still, of mud and filth. Brine started to creep into his nostrils, and Clint shook it off, burying his head until the only thing he could smell was bath soap and sweat, and the neat, indescribable scent of Phillip. An arm clasped him so tightly around his bruised ribs that every bone creaked.

On his other side, someone had his arm, gripping hard, and a steady hand fell between his shoulderblades.

“C’mon, Clint, c’mon,” Jasper’s voice muttered in his ear, “just one more step. Another. Nearly there, I promise.” 

He said it over and over again, in every language in his repertoire, covering the rush of the water. _One more step. Un paso mas. Un pas de plus. One more step. Një hap më shumë. Egy lépés. One more step. Un pas mes. Hatua moja zaidi. Just one more. Mais um passo._ There were more, Clint was sure, lost somewhere in the general confusion, but it was enough.

Un paso mas, he struggled through the current, caught between Jasper’s mutters and Phillip’s sweat. When he heard the wails start, midway through, he dug his hand in hard, twisted his fingers around Jas’s webbed belt, and asked him to shout. When he felt the body hit his knees, cold hand brushing his calf, he dug his fingers into Phillip’s collar, scrambling around until he found skin and fuzz and felt the thwip of a heartbeat.

Then the water churned around his waist, then knees, then only around his calves, then sticks and brush battered his ankles. Phillip’s… Coulson’s… hands were under his armpits, nearly dislocating them as he jerked, while Jasper planted both palms under his ass and shoved and Clint was up, at last, on solid-- if sodden-- ground. He collapsed to his knees.

“Let’s never do that again,” Jasper groaned, staggering forward and slumping to a rest against a large boulder. “Let’s just… ow.” He’d slid off the boulder and landed in a mesquite bush. Clint snorted, in spite of himself. “Oh, yeah, now he starts to notice shit again.”

“I notice a lot,” Clint said, then belatedly pushed himself up to start scanning the hills surrounding them, ‘cause he didn’t need to be a liar over something like that.

They got themselves up and moving eventually. Clint’d stopped even questioning how Coulson’d gotten the job of Clint-wrangling, he just flopped himself back on Coulson’s shoulder and let himself be dragged. 

The hills were quiet around them now, no more shadows-- or coyotes, or whatever the fuck that thing had been that Clint’d shot. He'd had more than enough delusions for one night-- no one else needed to know that he’d been sure he’d been shooting at a man. Didn’t need to make it even more obvious he was a disaster.

“It’s okay, Agent Barton,” Coulson said in his ear, “May and Sitwell are watching out. You just concentrate on not fainting on me, huh?”

“I’ll try, Ph… sir,” Clint mumbled, and got a thoughtful nod in response.

“That’s all I ask,” Coulson said, and it should have been a complete sentence, it’d sounded like it had a period at the end, but just as he was wearing down, Coulson accelerated back into it. “You haven’t failed me yet."

And that was kinda the fucking end, because hallucinations of the wrong flood were one thing, and delusions about coyotes and men another, but that was just _painful_ and what had he done to deserve his brain doing that to him?

“I guess you’re next on the list then,” he said, and felt Coulson tense. _Yeah, good work, Clint, find the last intact shards of your dignity and step on them._

“What do you mean?” Coulson asked, so reasonably it demanded an answer.

Clint shrugged and said the first thing that floated into his waterlogged brain:

“California.”

“Ah.” 

Coulson was silent for a minute as they walked, both of them struggling to find the rhythm that had carried them down to the wash, wet suit pants dragging against sodden cargoes.

“I’m disappointed, I admit,” he said eventually, his voice light over some underlying strain, “but would I classify that as you failing me? No. Not at all. I’m worried about you finding what you need there.”

“Yeah well,” Clint brushed it off, had to for his own sanity, “it's my own needs that get me into trouble. Fucked shit up with Bobbi. But California… sir… it’s my chance. To… to try and fix shit for once, right? She was right, after all,” he sighed, “not to trust me. ‘Cause I just break everything. But she gave me a chance to put it back together, and I’m gonna try. For her. Gotta be good enough.”

“You were _always_ good enough, Clint,” Coulson hissed, and Clint stumbled, losing the rhythm of their walk. He’d seen the guy lay out enemies with a single punch before; this felt like one aimed at his own breadbasket.

Coulson wasn’t done, though. 

“And moving to a place where you have no connections and no one knows your worth isn’t going to fix things with you and Agent Morse,” he finished.

Clint nearly hit him. If he’d had _strength_ he would have done it, or would have growled and flounced like he had years ago, when Phillip’d tried to find him a future that didn't involve him being a lone mercenary.

It wasn’t _fair_ , it was just mean, that this was the second time Coulson’d done this to him over California. Back in his office, when Agent Coulson’d asked, so off-hand, if Clint’d be _bored_ , like Clint’s own convenience meant anything. He’d tried to shake it off, forget the conversation entirely. Not like the guy knew the full story, anyway. 

_Well he knows it now_ Clint's traitorous brain whispered.

Despite his attempts, Clint’d found himself re-considering California after that interview. There was nothing like Coulson’s team there, no handlers like Sitwell, nothing _fun_ to do. In California, he’d be “that guy who came with Agent Morse.” Clint knew he was a fucking coward, and a selfish one at that, but suddenly the prospect of _concentrating on Bobbi_ had become the prospect of _hanging off Bobbi like a strangling vine._

But that, he knew, was his own heart trying to get him to run away again. To leave his mess behind.

“Can’t stop trying,” Clint told him now. “Bobbi deserves someone who’ll fight to keep her. Gotta try… she’s… she’s worth everything. And she’s hurt, she’s so fucking hurt, Coulson, I can’t just tell her she’s _not that important._ We don’t run. That’s always been us. Not doing it now.”

It was a trump card. The one he played in his late night conversations with the coward on his shoulder, whispering in his ear. Coulson absorbed it, nodded thoughtfully, and shifted until he had Clint riding high against his side instead of cuddled against his shoulder.

“I’m the _last_ person who should be giving you relationship advice,” he said. Clint heard the unspoken _but I’m gonna dive right in and do it anyway_. 

It would have been a wonderful time for those coyote shadow things to give an encore performance, since Clint wasn’t sure he could stand his one-week stand, occasional daydream, and-- apparently-- boss, telling him what to do with his love life. If he’d just thought it’d be a lecture, Clint might have been able to endure it, but Coulson didn’t fucking _lecture_. He did, occasionally, speechify-- which, so did Phillip, Clint remembered, and seriously how dumb could he have possibly been, not to have known they were one and the same since the first time he saw Coulson standing, a shadow, next to Jasper in the viewing gallery above the range? 

He didn’t think he’d be able to forget the connection ever again, not in a briefing room, not in the middle of a firefight, not wading through a storm-swollen strea-- oh.

Oh _fuck._

Okay, so Clint was slow at the moment, and he did have water still seeping out of both ears, but he wasn’t quite deaf. 

_Chris, no_. That was what Coulson had said by the banks of the wash, when he’d looked at Clint with terrified eyes. Like he’d thought-- what? That Clint really was planning to wander off into the desert? 

He’d _known_.

Coulson-- _Phillip_. He’d mother-fucking _known_ that Clint was the same kid who’d hung off (and on) him for a week in Miami, saved his furry ass, and then had a temper tantrum and stormed off.

How the hell long had he known?

Clint thought about that first half-memory of Agent Coulson again, watching him from above as he showed off to the SHIELD firearms instructor, first with handgun and then with... and then with his bow. 

Wasn’t a hell of a lot in life Clint thought was genuinely memorable about himself, at least until someone became acquainted with his mouth up close and personal, but he _was_ Hawkeye after all. (Up until he’d been betrayed, drowned that name in a disaster where it ought to stay.) How many other archers would Phillip have come into contact with?

All right, any trickster divinish beings out there could stop laughing right the fuck immediately, Clint got it, he was an _idiot_ Had he mentioned lately that he had a head injury, probably?

Coulson’d known since the beginning, of course he had. Known and said _nothing_ , done nothing-- except keep a safe Sitwell distance between the two of them.

All that time, and he’d never had a chance to impress his Phillip, not with all his daydreaming.

And whatever Phillip had seen in him, it hadn’t been enough for him to come out from his protective Senior Agent shell-- at least, not until now, when Clint was half-drowned and all-failure. 

“Why?” Clint found himself whimpering. _Why now? I wasn’t_ quite _pathetic enough to notice before?_ Or was it just that Clint was nearly out of his life again, so it didn’t matter?

“Do you remember when I told you I… fell apart, after my mother died? After my, ah, last tour?” Coulson asked him, wandering off on a sudden tangent, thankfully oblivious to Clint’s latest mental forehead-slap moment. “It was an understatement.”

Clint nodded, relieved that at least he seemed to have kept this latest meltdown inside his own head. Even in the dim light, Clint was close enough to see the bob of his adam’s apple before Coulson continued: 

“When Nick came to visit about six months in, he found me in my bedroom with a gun in my mouth."

Of course Clint stumbled. 

Of _course_ he did. Stumbled, half-turned his ankle, and came upright so fast he got dizzy, saw the stars spinning. Clint ended up clutching Coulson with both hands while trying to get steady again, and had to force himself to pull his second hand off, not to go rooting around for a heartbeat just… just to make sure.

_An understatement._ Coulson had been so far gone he’d nearly killed himself, and that was how he brought the topic up. And if he had pulled that trigger Phillip would have died with him-- and Clint would have gone on to have his happy desert daydreams never knowing the object of them was buried in some national cemetery. Might have gone his whole life still thinking about someday without realizing Phillip hadn’t thought there was a someday worth seeing.

While his brain was still too frozen with horror to catch his mouth and shove a sock in it, Clint felt his mouth open and a question tumble out:

"Would you have pulled the trigger?" 

Goddamn mouth was gonna get him killed one of these days.

"Dunno," Coulson said. He took a moment to guide them around a patch of brittlebush, scowling down at it before continuing. “When I got the gun out, I wanted to-- obviously. I mean, that’s… why else would I? It wasn’t just to see how it tasted. I wanted _out_ , so badly. I wanted to stop hurting people… I wanted to stop hurting. But actually going through with it?”

He paused, clearly lost in thought, and Clint let his free hand drift until it came to rest again on top of the breast of Coulson’s tac vest. Not like Coulson would feel the comfort, not like Clint had a choice not to offer it.

“I… I would feel a hell of a lot more comfortable if I could say ‘fuck no,’” Coulson continued at last, “but I can’t.”

Their boot heels scuffed over the dirt, for the span of either a minute or a lifetime.

Clint waited. Whatever the fuck was going on, clearly it wasn’t finished yet, and he didn’t have the brain-- or heart-- left to try and anticipate it.

Coulson’s deep sigh alerted him, gave him half an instant to tense up again.

“I _can_ say I’ve never wanted to do it since,” he said. “Even when it’s been very bad. Always been some other way out-- or through.” He paused, and Clint’s stomach dropped. Thank heavens for small comforts and everything, ‘cause Clint didn’t think he could take it if Coulson’d given a different answer-- but that wasn’t a very promising pause. 

“And what about you? Before..." Coulson asked, trailing off at the end of his sentence into a tone so low Clint wasn’t really sure what he’d said.

It’d sounded like _before Miami._

And ah, yeah, Clint had been right, that had been a _really bad pause._ And he got it now, he saw Coulson’s line. They were actually _exchanging_ horrible secrets, right.

What if Clint didn’t _want_ to swap? What if he wanted to keep one last part of his miserable past confined to him and him alone? He didn’t owe Coulson anything, just because the guy’d laid his out on the table. 

He might have imagined telling Phillip, once in a while, just so he’d known for certain that when Chris’d run it _hadn’t been Phillip’s fault._ It was too late for that, apparently. 

Time to admit that the Phillip Clint had wanted to tell, had imagined telling, belonged to that sandy daydream future that had turned to dust, if he’d ever existed at all. That future was of a man that was gone, a man that _had_ died at some point, leaving Agent Phil Coulson upright and walking in his place, dragging his scars.

And as for Agent Coulson? 

Clint sighed, as the man in question eased him down over a steep bit of trail, half-turning to gather Clint into his arms as he slid, his gaze trained at their feet and the night shadowing his face. His grip on Clint’s far elbow was steady. 

Yeah, no-- it wasn’t really ever a question after all. Clint couldn’t leave him hanging. For everything he had done-- from trying to save Clint’s soul when they first met to trying to save his ass tonight-- he deserved to know.

Clint waited until they were back on even ground and Coulson had turned forward before he spoke.

"I guess I thought about it, for half a minute one really bad fall." He attempted to twist his mouth into a smile, was sure it was a grimace-- not that Coulson could see either. “I went mercenary instead.”

_You know what happened next_ Clint left unsaid. 

And, yeah, from this distance Clint could afford to admit how bad that fall had actually been. From this _safe_ distance-- because life had gotten messed up so many times over since Miami, but it was still a bright line in his life. He’d never been there again, flipping a knife over in his hands, sitting on the edge of a full tub, and wondering. Considering the way shit had gone down for him as a merc, he figured he got to be proud of that. 

He had imagined that Phillip would have been proud of him, anyway, if sometimes _only_ for not cutting his own wrists. Apparently, because any powers out there existed mostly to fuck with them, he was actually getting the chance to find out. From Coulson’s own story, it was already pretty clear what the man’s response was gonna be-- “I’ve been there, too.”

And that was a head trip, all right-- screw Phillip being _proud_ of him, Coulson might do something even more important. He might _understand._

"Goin’ merc was not my best plan ever, I guess-- but I survived,” he said, trying to find a way to get a look at Coulson’s face without being obvious. “Story of my fucking life, really. Too damn stupid to die." He risked a head-twist directly up, to find Coulson looking down at him. "So are you." 

Fuck, that wasn’t really how he’d meant that to come out-- _regroup, Barton, regroup, goddamnit._

Coulson’s laughter-- dim through the blood rushing to his ears-- was a shock.

“That’s a hell of a lot more accurate than anything my shrink ever said about it,” he replied. 

Clint snorted, and wondered if he went to Doc H. too. _That’d be a trip._

“But that's not the whole story." Coulson continued after a minute.

"What's the whole story?" Clint asked, though he wasn't sure he wanted to know. Coulson must not have been sure he wanted Clint to know either, the way he was looking at Clint, searching, nerves obvious even in the starlight.

"My partner at the time was the only person besides Nick I still had left Stateside who’d known me before my last tour. I’d moved to be closer to him-- didn’t figure the town mattered, anyway. And then he left me.” 

He said it in that same damn calm “nice day isn’t it” tone of voice he’d been using all night, and Clint nearly cursed that it’d taken him two years to finally find Coulson’s tell, and it figured he’d never get to take advantage of it. 

Also, unlike the first time Coulson’d mentioned a partner, he was seeing Phillip now, all big heart and bigger hands, slumped in some damned generic bedroom, nothing personal about it yet, staring down at his knees or waiting for someone to walk back through the door who never would. Clint didn’t like the immediate desire to pound someone’s ass into the pavement that came with it.

“And there I was,” Coulson continued, “suddenly alone in a strange town, back in a civilian setting for _good_ for the first time in over a decade-- for practically the first time in my adult life, no less. With no one who got how scary a place my brain was around to help me out.”

He paused, licking his lips loudly enough for Clint to hear, and went on, still staring straight at Clint with those night-blind eyes of his that probably only saw only the shadows on Clint’s face.

“I was sitting in my bedroom with a gun in my mouth because I didn't have a reason left to fight the darkness,” he said.

"Oh." Clint replied, and then they walked into an ocotillo.

“Oh my god,” Coulson laughed-- if something with that much outrage could be called a laugh-- “does everything in this damned desert have spines?” He pulled himself free of the dry canes with a growl and began to help Clint. “Damnit, Barton I’m sorry.”

“No-- fuck, no need,” Clint replied and turned in Coulson’s arms to help him pull his shirtsleeve free from a short thorn that had caught it as he came to Clint’s rescue. “You’re pilot, I should be navigating. My bad.”

“You’re beat up, bloody, half-drowned, and hopefully not concussed, Barton, I’m amazed you’re still upright. I certainly don’t expect you to be watching out for inconvenient vegetation.” 

They’d sorted themselves out, and Coulson had hip-checked Clint back into place at his side, like it was nothing, like they did it every day. Coulson got them moving again with a kind of resigned sigh. Clint figured that was it, and he should be grateful for the ocotillo and just leave it alone.

But he… but he needed to _know._ Primarily, he needed to know what kind of vengeance Fury had brought down on the ex-partner douchebag’s sorry ass after he’d found Coulson. He waited until they’d set a decent pace again and the general area was free of everything but the relatively prickle-less creosote and sage brush before opening his mouth. 

“What about your ex?” he asked, trying to match his own nonchalance to Coulson’s. “Fury kick his ass?”

Coulson snorted.

"Not that I know of, but it wouldn’t surprise me. I don't hold any grudge there, although I think Nick does.”

“Why the hell _not_?” The words burst out so fast Clint nearly couldn’t get them clear. “He abandoned you!”

“If you ask him,” Coulson said, his voice low, his face turned towards the horizon, where the thick cluster of stars was just beginning to turn lighter, where the distant mountains leapt to meet them, “I drove him away. There’s some truth to that. I was a horrible person to be around at the time-- too cold, too quick-tempered, pretty much incapable of really giving anything back. Normal enough some days, just explosive others-- you can't expect someone to hold on through that kind of shit, they owe themselves a life, too." 

He shrugged, still watching Clint intently. Clint swallowed, wishing his head didn't still feel like it was stuffed with the brass section of a marching band, and tried to imagine the man Coulson was describing, the man who’d hated what he’d become so badly he’d shoved the barrel of a gun past his own teeth. 

He couldn’t. Couldn’t imagine how that man had grown out of Phillip-- who’d been, between lust and regard, so fucking determined to pound Clint into an overwhelmed jelly. He could see how that cold man had gone into the making of Agent Coulson, currently busy attempting to save Clint’s rather soggy ass, but only around the edges, in the shadows of his eyes and lips, maybe.

"Couldn’t he have kept a life of his own but not fucking run off?”

“Maybe,” Coulson said slowly, “but you know…. When I started to feel better, I started to feel worse too, about the hell I’d put him through in those few months. I’m not sure, honestly, whether I’d ever have been able to get rid of the feeling of guilt about it-- some things get too twisted to ever get put right.” 

He heaved a sigh, his chest expanding against Clint’s, and Clint found himself breathing deep in a kind of sympathetic reaction. His ribs ached, but the air felt cold in his lungs, and his head reeled. 

“I suppose I don’t know if that would have been the case,” Coulson continued, “but I can’t blame anyone for getting _out_ instead of facing the possibility of living with that guilt-- mine, theirs, doesn’t matter-- around every corner, even after everything is supposedly better. Or if he’d stayed only because I was too weak to survive if he left-- no. That… I can’t stand the thought of that, having to be grateful every day that someone let me hurt them so I wouldn’t off myself.”

_I’m the last person to be giving you relationship advice_ , Coulson’d said, and Clint had brushed it aside. Thought he’d meant because he was Clint’s ex… something. 

Clint clearly hadn’t been paying the right sort of attention.

“In this scenario, is it me or Bobbi you're referring to?" he asked, not really wanting the answer.

"Does it matter?"

"... No." 

It really didn’t, not when he imagined Bobbi’s face all squinched up, eyes wide, when she watched him. The feel of Coulson’s tac vest digging hard into his side, of his forearm tightening, pulled Clint away from the image.

"You can hate me for all this later, Barton, and you can tell me to go to hell if you want.” Coulson pushed aside a branch of mesquite as he searched for words. “But ask yourself if you really don't think it'd end that way for you two: one of the two of you walking out; it doesn't matter who. You both feeling guilty about not making it work, and you, you being alone. In a strange town. With Jasper and… and all your friends elsewhere.”

Yeah, Clint felt kinda like telling him to go to hell.

“Not the same,” he protested. “We’re not-- due respect, but neither of us just finished a tour in the sandbox. Hell, this isn’t… I’m not…. Be worried about her, not me. This isn’t the same _league_ with shit I’ve endured, Coulson.”

If it hurt worse than being left in a ring of CIA stooges with an inconveniently-dead body, it was his own fault-- his own damn mouth that had betrayed him, nothing he got to complain about. 

“Did I say it was? Barton, it’s not a competition, you don’t have to be ready to kill yourself to get help, and you don’t have to win worst sob story to deserve your pain. Any fool can see you’re not happy. Given what Agent Morse has been through, I imagine that _not happy_ is enough of an understatement to be an insult. Are either of you really in a headspace where you can support each other? What will you do if you see that you're not helping-- hell that you're making her worse? Even if you don’t care if it destroys you, ask yourself if it’s fair to her to watch it happen."

Clint would’ve liked to say something to that, oh yes he would have. Except that he didn’t think he could actually _form sentences_ anymore. Because then he’d have to answer that question, and he couldn’t. The desert sand crunched under his feet, but he felt like he was standing in that empty bedroom he’d imagined Phillip in earlier, staring at an undecorated wall, just… waiting. 

For what, he wasn’t sure.

It was almost a relief when the howls came back, distant outside that hallucinatory window, because it spared him from trying to think any more. 

Time sped after that, and Coulson dragged, and eventually Jasper came up on his other side and hoisted, and his arms were around both of them, his left side swaying more with Jasper’s limp. Which meant story time was over, and Clint had nothing to do but hold on and endure.

His final coherent thought was:

“Phillip?”

“Yeah,” Coulson said, sounding very far away.

“‘M’gonna just faint now, sorry.”

And he did.

\---

It was honestly a relief when Barton fainted, despite putting even more burden on Sitwell’s weak ankle. It made it easier for them to carry him-- not to mention easier for Phil not to think about the way Barton’s fingers had kept wriggling into his open collar as they helped him through the water-- or the way he had kept on calling him _Phillip_ , like he was making up for two years of utter silence on the subject all at.

Or, for that matter, the way Phil seemed to have left all his brain-to-mouth filters by the trailside somewhere. It hadn’t been his place, goddamnit. Not even hearing that name on Clint’s lips could _make_ it his place-- one frankly surreal night racing through the desert, hallucinating past hurricanes and trying not to faint was not an invitation to familiarity. 

Phil tried to remind himself that Clint was not him, forced away the sudden flash in his mind of Clint sitting in a bare bedroom, windows open to a palm-filled night, and turning a gun over in his hand. No. Clint Barton was stronger than Phil himself had been, more flexible-- and he had support Phil had never had, even if Phil’s reordering of the SHIELD universe had yet to saturate San Diego the way it had New York.

_You trust me?_ Clint had asked, and Phil had pressed a gun into his hands. 

“Damnit, sir, pull your end up, I can’t carry this idiot alone,” Sitwell said, and Phil blinked. What had he been doing? Right-- not thinking about Barton. 

Just carrying him. He and Sitwell hobbled along with Barton draped between them, head bowed, and tried to avoid or crab-walk around the occasional stand of prickly pear or give wide berth to a cholla, lest it attack. 

They were so close, now, to what Collins said was the extraction point that it was a simple matter of math. How fast could they cover how much uneven terrain on a dark night, versus how fast could their watchers? How many shadows moving against the skyline indicated how many actual bodies? How many vehicles would be waiting when they reached the extraction point?

None, as it turned out.

By the time Phil and his team rounded the last low ring of hills to see the long valley and, beyond it, one of what must be the last of the foothills of the Rincon mountains, it was so late in the night it must be nearly morning, the stars beginning to fade. The only living things Phil saw under the big dome of sky and mountain were his agents, himself, and the drifts of mesquite, acacia, and cactus. Nothing from SHIELD. No helicopters, no vans, not even a solitary Vespa.

Collins turned and looked back at him, her entire body slumping.

“They said they’d be here,” she told him. “This is it. I checked… I double-checked sir, I did.”

“It’s all right,” Coulson told her, bending to help Jasper set their burden down. Barton folded into a surprisingly compact lump on the cold desert floor. “It’s all right.”

He looked over his shoulder. Shadows were gathering thickly in the creases of the mountain they’d come down, somehow darker as the eastern sky paled. The howls that had chased them intermittently through the night had transformed into satisfied yips and mutters. There was shaking in the ocotillo canes, rustling under the creosote and sage, and it was growing closer.

He could see them at last, little points of light like sodium- yellow stars, beginning to bob beneath the arms of saguaro, over the tops of barrels and in the interstices of cholla. 

His people, his agents, moved into a ring around Barton, set their backs to each other, and drew their guns. Phil thought about saying something, giving some kind of order, but if he couldn’t trust them all, even in their exhausted state, to know what to do in a last stand, what good had the past two years been? What had he been doing except pissing into the wind?

“Come on,” he said under his breath instead, “just try it.” 

The night exhaled, and growled.

The little yellow points grew closer, began to resolve into eyes, and a single howl answered him.

And then the growl grew louder, and louder still, concentrating itself into a low rumble. Around a sharp sort of slope, a small pair of yellow points joined the others, grew rapidly.

Then, as Phil watched incredulously, it grew brothers, all converging on their location.

Jeeps.

He was seeing jeeps, coming down from the north.

“Pick up Barton,” he told May and Jasper, and ran out with Collins to flag them down.


	4. Chapter 4

The first thing Clint saw when he woke up was Jasper Sitwell framed by a palm tree.

After a moment he revised that image-- he was actually seeing Jasper Sitwell sitting in front of window, and outside the window there was a palm tree, so it was the palm tree that was framed and not Sitwell at… he was probably at least a little high. 

“Hi,” he said, and Jasper looked up from a magazine. About ten years’ worth of lines abruptly dropped off his face.

“Fuck,” Clint said, “just how bad a shape was I in, anyway?”

“Bad.” Jasper tossed the magazine on his seat-- squeaky SHIELD-issue vinyl-- and wandered over to the bed, where he poked at one of several bags decorating Clint’s IV pole. “Bad enough I’m surprised you remember any of it.”

Clint took a moment to sort through his memories-- or he started to. He got as far as realizing he probably hadn’t actually hallucinated any of the bits where it turned out his kinda reserved boss was also the guy he’d known and spent a week mostly in bed with back at the start of his mercenary days, and his brain insisted it was through digging for the moment and he could just fuckin’ deal.

“I remember you had an anniversary comin’ up,” he said instead. “You all set?”

Jasper winced.

“I _had_ an anniversary coming up,” he agreed. “Came and went last night.”

“Okay,” Clint struggled a little, flailing, before Jasper took pity on him and grabbed the heavy gray remote that raised his bed. Clint began to lift upwards. “How’d it go?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Jasper said, and rubbed his shiny, newly-bald pate. “Apparently me being half-drowned and exhausted and on the other side of the country isn’t how Cecelia wanted to celebrate. Could have understood it if I were stuck in a canyon in Arizona, but not in a nice dry hospital when I could have gone back to New York. Can’t blame her, really.” 

Now that Clint could see out the window past the palm fronds, he realized he was looking at a row of low roofs-- and a line of lighter blue before the sky hit the horizon. 

“Where the hell are we?” he asked, hoarse.

“SHIELD Medical. San Diego base. Get used to it, I guess.” 

California. He’d fucking made it after all. The laughter felt like knives in Clint’s lungs.

“Why?” he asked. Was he in such bad shape they were afraid to move him back to New York?

“You know, we kept asking you that. California was your decision,” Jasper said primly, which was a trip on its own, ‘cause Clint’d never seen Jasper _prim_ unless he was trying hard not to yell. And that’d been at least a year-- at any rate since Clint’d finally convinced him that coming from his buttoned-up wire-framed shiny little pate, the concentrated filth spewing from his mouth had a pretty shocking effect on anyone within the blast radius.

“Yeah but… not yet, not till after this, right? One last mission?” 

It’d been supposed to be his time to say goodbye to everyone, Coulson on down. (Not just Coulson, _Phillip_ \-- Jesus fuck, saying goodbye to Phillip after just finding him again was a whole different ballgame than saying bye to Agent Coulson, his old CO, and one he wasn’t sure he knew the rules to.) That plan had gone straight to muddy damp hell, but that was kinda par.

Jasper shrugged.

“You seemed worried, in the helicopter. About Bobbi moving without you. We figured since we had to evac you anyway, we might as well send you to Cali so you aren’t stuck in medical back in New York when she gets here. Actually, she may be able to get here early, even, so you’re not stuck with me.”

“You’re not staying. Cecelia--”

“Eh, seemed like a nice place for a vacation,” Jasper told him. “And someone has to keep your ass from getting bored.” 

“Yeah, but Coulson’s gotta need you to help with the debrief.”

“Coulson’s the one who gave me the time off. Told me he didn’t want me limping around looking like a martyr when I could be here bugging you.”

“Oh. Well, hey, you were always his favorite,” Clint said, then shook his head. “Or maybe not. I mean, if that’s pissing Cecelia off--”

“I volunteered, Clint,” Jasper told him, and started fiddling with a remote control. “When Coulson said he was sending you down here, I volunteered.”

As he said it, he pressed savagely on the power button on the remote, and the big old tv that hung above Clint’s bed snapped to life, and Judge Judy scowled at them both from the tv screen. 

Clint ignored both Jasper and Judy in favor of looking up at the IV pole, squinting to try and figure out what the hell kinda wacky-ass drugs they’d given him, because he thought he’d just heard Jasper tell him he’d _chosen_ to miss his own anniversary in order to sit by Clint’s sorry ass. How the hell Clint merited that when he hadn’t even _blown_ Jasper, so it shouldn’t even have started to be a competition, Clint wasn’t sure. 

"Don't worry about it, fuck," Jasper said, and Clint realized he must have made some kind of indignified squeaking sound, a fear confirmed when Jasper went on. "Jesus, Clint, you look like you got slapped in the face with Fury's wet boxers or something. It's not a big deal."

"But Cecelia's not okay with it," Clint managed. Jasper looked away.

"She knows she's dating a field agent. Shit comes up. Missions go bad. Smart-ass snipers that you're responsible for get themselves hurt and you gotta make sure these California pricks know how to take care of him right. If she can't... if she can't live with that maybe it's better if we just stop fooling ourselves."

"You're not my SO anymore," Clint said, searching for something to cut the tension. "Can't hide behind that responsibility bullshit. C'mon Jasper, what is it? Do you _like_ me?" Ah, yes, juvenile teasing. When in doubt, fall back on that.

"Shut up," Jasper told him, but he was smiling as he said it. 

Clint started to open his mouth again, then froze. He'd just remembered the rest of Jasper's speech, and it turned out that Jasper basically bombing his relationship in order to keep Clint company wasn’t actually wasn’t the most shocking part of the whole deal.

“You want something with a plot, or just background noise?” Jasper asked as he flicked up a channel, landing on a telenovela briefly before continuing to flip.

“Coulson sent me here?” Clint asked, when it became clear Jasper wasn’t planning on going into any more detail.

What the hell had Coulson been trying to convince him not to do then? He only _wished_ he’d hallucinated the last half of their stumble through the desert, both of Arizona and of his and Coulson’s shared pasts and Clint’s future.

Jasper looked sharply at him, muting the sound on the tv and putting down the remote. MIA danced soundlessly on the screen in pink zebra-stripe overalls, and Jas was probably gonna try and claim later it’d been a coincidence he’d stopped there.

(It wasn’t. Clint had seen his CD collection.)

“He said it’s what you wanted, and you deserved to have your chance.”

Clint promptly forgot about Jasper’s secret stash of British rap. He’d already known Phillip Coulson had a secret move, a guaranteed KO: he believed in you like a fucking punch to the chest. Clint’s first experience getting slammed by it had been Miami, and he _thought_ he’d endured the worst Coulson could deliver back in the desert.

He’d been wrong. Apparently Coulson had spent the last however many years perfecting it, until he could deliver a knockout blow without being in the same state.

\----

On the tv, Rihanna was proving that she did have her umbrella-ella-ella-eh-eh-eh by gyrating with it while getting splashed with very artistic off-camera buckets of water. Clint hadn’t worked out quite why swearing that she’d be there forever and would stick it out to the end required fishnets and a french maid onesie, but he was willing to keep watching in the hopes he’d find out.

Jasper was due, or due-ish-- it was half-past afternoon-vitals check and not yet to institutional nutritionist approved-dinner. The past few days, Jas had arrived about half an hour before the to-be-feared hour of boiled green beans and butterscotch pudding bearing In-and-Out. It’d nearly broken Clint’s heart the first time he unwrapped a double double, more because he and Jasper’d had nearly the same burger-based conversations over green chile Lotaburgers on nights they’d snuck out of the Pegasus base. Raiding the local burger chains had long ago become ritual on Stateside ops. 

“I dunno, man, you really want to live in a state that produces fries like this?” Jasper’d frowned, but been unwilling to say anything else, and brushed off any thanks as briskly as he’d de-crumbed his trouser legs. 

Clint wasn’t sure what he’d want to say, anyway, anymore. _I’m going to miss you_ felt like he was looking for sympathy-- or maybe rubbing it in. He hadn’t spent two years learning Jasper Sitwell inside and out to be fooled now; the guy was hurting. It _could_ be Cecelia… probably mostly was… but that honestly made it worse. _Thank you_ seemed so inadequate. 

The elevator dinged distantly, and Clint perked up, waiting for the smell of fried meat to waft down the corridor. It obstinately failed to waft, and Clint began to settle back down. 

Then Bobbi walked into the little hospital room, bringing the California sunshine tangled in her hair, and Clint muted the tv and sat his bed up so suddenly he nearly pitched forward in it.

“Clint,” she said, stopping under the tv itself and watching him, a relieved smile pouring over her face. “From what Jasper said, I thought it was going to be a lot worse than this.”

 _You came_ Clint nearly said, before swallowing it down in favor of a shrug that accidentally bared his right shoulder, because hospital gowns were traitorous things, the whole fucking lot of ‘em.

“Face is about the only thing that didn’t get damaged,” he said instead. “But I’m doing okay. Nothing permanently broken.” 

“Well good, we need your face intact.” Bobbi scrunched her nose at him and smiled again, before looking around for a place to sit. 

There was a chair next to his bed, all ready for Jasper’s usual visit. Bobbi hooked it with her foot and dragged it over to the foot of the bed, flopping down in it with a tired sigh.

“Long flight?” Clint asked, taking inventory as he did. She was still in one piece herself, from the toes of her boots to the dip of the waistband of her jeans, which completely failed to meet the top of her faded Star Wars t-shirt. Toe to head she was the old Bobbi, all right, like he’d always known her. Her smile was still there, too, but now he thought it was a little too wide, too bright.

“Didn’t get in till ten last night, but fine otherwise. I’ve been moving into the apartment this morning,” she told him. “Unpacking all the dishes, putting together the bed. Movers lost a couple of the boxes, I’m sorry-- including your DVDs.”

“Well, that’s how a move works, right? Better that than anything important.”

“Hey, bright side? You won’t have to keep pretending the Gilmore Girls box set is mine when people come over,” she told him, and leaned forward. Clint watched her limbs rearrange themselves, the way her eyes skittered over his bare shoulder and away.

He let her talk for a little while, vent about the move, chatter about the colleagues from the San Diego base who’d come to help her-- come without knowing her at all-- then take her out for beers while she paid for the traditional pizza. It was all so fluid and easy, and she never looked up at him at all. Had she once, since their fight, for a moment longer than she had to? Cafeteria lunches and late night packing sessions blurred in his mind, and he couldn’t remember.

“Hey Bobbi,” he said after a while, breaking into her babble, “why are you here?”

“Well, I had time to kill before Agent Gonzalez and the others take me out to dinner,” she said, still looking at her hands, picking at a bit of opalescent polish.

“Yeah, no, I mean why are you _here_ ,” he repeated, ignoring the pain in his side as he bent forward to make her look at him.

“To see you, Clint, duh.” She gave him one of the old smiles, the big crooked _you dork_ ones. It didn’t reach her eyes. “Make sure you’re healing up okay.”

“Make sure I can come home soon, right?” he asked, and watched her still. He felt like he was on a roof, looking at her through a scope, waiting for movement.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Can’t let you get the idea you’re getting out of unpacking or anything.” Whatever it was on the knee of her jeans that she found so fascinating, Clint couldn’t see it. What had Coulson said, just before Clint’d fainted on him? 

_What will you do if you see that you’re making it worse?_

He closed his eyes and thought about drowning for a half second, just until expiring rather than staying in the conversation didn’t seem like a good idea anymore. 

“Bobbi,” he asked when he’d gotten to the part where water got in his nose, slid down the back of his throat, “do you honestly see yourself ever trusting me again?”

The silence in the room was loud enough that it nearly muffled the honk of traffic from three floors below, and he was sure it was the sun making him flush, not his own embarrassment. The heat on his skin and the buzzing in his ears was too all-encompassing to come from his own half-drained blood vessels.

“Clint, that’s a stupid question,” she said finally, the implied _you dork_ far less fond this time. “I’m here. I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, but you’re not looking at me.” He poked at one of her hands just to feel the twitch, and watched her flatten them with an effort, trying not to pull away. “And I don’t think you really like me right now-- which is fine. It’s totally fine. I mean, I get it, I don’t deserve to be--”

“Oh my god, Clint, shut _up_ ,” Bobbi yelled, yanking her hands away and flinging them up like she was trying to keep from strangling him. “I do not want to go through this again!” 

They stared at each other for a moment, and Clint regretted wishing she would look at him, ‘cause that one damn glare broke his ribs over again. Then she shook her head, her eyes going soft.

“It’s fine, it’s over,” she reassured him. “We’re starting again, remember? We’re going to make it right.”

And fine, okay-- except it didn’t much look like she was ever going to be all right again.

“Why?” Clint asked, trying to keep the whine out of his voice, and fisting his hands in the blanket to keep from reaching out to her. _Come on, Bobbi, give me anything. Anything that’s not_ you’re so weak.

One more cliff, one more attempt to fly. _Fuck, this one’s going to hurt._

Bobbi stared at him, shaking her head.

“Because you begged me to,” she said, looking incredulous. “‘We don’t run away.’ That’s what you said.” 

Which was all true-- and not an answer at all. 

“Yeah, I remember. I know why I’m in California, Bobbi. I know what I asked. Why did you say yes?” He tried to make his voice come out like Coulson’s had, the more steady the worse things got. Turned out only Coulson could manage that trick; Clint gave up after a couple sentences and concentrated instead on just getting everything out before fear glued his lips shut.

She shied away from him while he talked, presenting her profile, and when she turned back she looked so pissed off he tried to back away, despite being stuck in bed.

“Because I love you, you idiot,” she hissed at him.

And she did, he didn’t doubt that, even after everything. He could see fondness in her eyes even pissed as she was at him, so angry she was biting back tears. Clint wished he were less of a jerk, that he were the kind of person who’d just leave it, take it however sulkily it was offered. Far too late to change his spots now, though.

“Yeah,” he said, “but you don’t trust me, and you don’t _like_ me, right? Isn’t that a kind of a sucky thing to do to yourself? Living with someone you don’t trust?”

“It’ll get better, though,” she told him, grabbing his hand and squeezing-- and that was the ACME anvil hitting his head as he tried to drag himself up off the canyon floor. “Isn’t that what you said? I get… I mean I get that it’s a thing, that you don’t know how to react well sometimes, okay? And it’ll get better. We’ve got a fresh start. We can make this work.”

“You’d have had a fresh start without me, too,” Clint said, carefully flexing his hand as her nails dug into his palm. “You were _planning_ on having a fresh start without me.”

“Maybe,” she choked, “maybe I figured it just wouldn’t be the same without me tripping over unstrung bows in my bedroom, huh?” 

He rolled his eyes, because it was better that than crying, better that than remembering her cursing on the carpet at four am as she untangled herself from a compound he’d been repairing in bed. It still wasn’t an answer, not a real one, and if she wanted to wait him out, she could, easily-- she was ten times better than he was at resisting interrogation.

“Why, Bobbi? C’mon,” he tried, willing her to give. “Anyone else would’ve told you to ditch me, why did you say yes? I know it’s stupid, but I need to know you don’t… I need to know I… Jesus, don’t send me in without intel, please?”

Her hand was gone from his before he registered her jumping from the chair. She flipped them both behind her back as she spun away and stalked off a couple paces, lacing them together so tightly her fingers went white.

“I told you, Clint. Because I love you. Why isn’t that enough?” 

“Bobbi, please. What would’ve been wrong with telling me we were over?”

“He would have won,” she spat, and turned back to him. Clint kinda wished she hadn’t, because he didn’t want to remember her face like that, pale and hard as marble.

“I’m not going to let him win,” she continued after a moment, while he just stared at her, blinking. “He fucked me over, he tried to destroy my life, he thought I was _so weak_ that he could take me to pieces and I wouldn’t fucking squeak.”

“He was wrong,” Clint told her, trying to do it right this time, shove all his awe into his voice. “He couldn’t beat you.”

“Oh Clint,” she sighed, melting a little and shaking her head, “Maybe I won in the end, but he beat me up pretty bad. I lost a home-- I didn’t even want to go back _into_ HQ to get my things out of my locker. I lost friends-- Melinda and Andrew and Mack and everyone I’m leaving behind.”

“Okay,” Clint said, “I can get that, Bobbi. But… but it doesn’t change that you don’t trust me or like me anymore. It doesn’t change that. You’re _good_ at friends, babe, you don’t need me here.”

She smiled at him, this lost little thing, the _damnit Clint, don’t be slow_ smile, and then it grew into something closer to the look she got in the middle of missions, when their options had narrowed down to shit and shittier.

“Because if I lose you, If I lose this, you and me, that’s one more thing he ruined. I’m not going to let him win, Clint. We’re going to get through this, because I’m not going to let him take you away from me, too. I’m not backing the fuck down.”

Bobbi’d always been most gorgeous like this, battle-ready, braced, and head flung back. He’d worshipped that look on her equally in the field as when she’d been naked and riding him, silhouetted against the pre-dawn windows in their dinky-ass apartment. 

“No, you never would,” Clint mumbled, feeling the words catch in his throat. He let himself take one last long stare to memorize that look on her face, “but maybe I am.”

Because after all, _I won’t let the bad guy win_ , while maybe better than _you can’t hack it on your own_ , still wasn’t _I want you by my side._

And it definitely wasn’t _I feel better when you’re here._ And Bobbi? Bobbi didn’t deserve to feel _worse_ anymore. 

“After all _this_?” Bobbi wailed, flinging her arms out like somehow the hospital room and California itself were part and parcel of Clint’s own patheticness. “Are you _kidding_ me? Fuck you, Barton, what did you promise me?”

“Bobbi--” Clint shrank from the acid in her voice.

“ _What did you promise me?_ ” She advanced on him, nearly shaking now. “When you were in Melinda’s living room on your goddamn _knees_ and it was two in the morning and I was crying and you… you were crying, you fucking jerk, what did you promise me? _Tell_ me.”

Clint looked straight into her eyes, and sighed.

“I said I don’t know how to do a strategic retreat,” he said. “And I promised I wasn’t gonna run.”

“You. _Coward._ You put me through all this, and now you decide you’re not strong enough? _Now_?”

“Yeah,” Clint said. “Yeah. Now. I’m sorry, Bobbi.”

She was crying again, and he was too, because he was the kind of fucking loser who did things like mess up even an attempt to stop messing shit up.

“Yeah,” she said, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, snuffling a little as she did. “Me too. I’m sorry you’re such a jackass, Clint.” 

And then she flopped back down in the chair and buried her head in her hands.

She did not, Clint noticed, bother to argue with him anymore, ask him to stay, repeat that things would get better. Before he’d been dragged through two floods, chased by howling somethings, and had his ego stripped bare, he probably would have been stung that she didn’t try to change his mind. Now, though, Clint just saw her in her new room in her new apartment, balcony windows open and curtains fluttering, and he saw her take a deep breath of sea air and walk out into the daylight.

Clint gave her space for a while, watching her and just letting his heart ache, ‘till her shoulders started twitching.

“You’re laughing,” he said then, feeling himself start to smile through the emptiness.

“‘Am not.” Her voice was muffled in her hands.

“Yeah, you are,” he said, not even bothering to hide the fondness in his voice. “It’s so shitty it’s funny isn’t it? I beg you for a chance, you get yourself all suited up and ready for it, all hell yeah let’s do this thing, we pack up all our fucking shit together, I come all the way here... And _then_ I fuck you over.”

Her shoulders started to quake. And yeah, that was his Bobbi, she never _could_ go long without laughing-- he loved that about her the most.

“You know what the worst, shittiest, funniest part is, though?” he asked.

She shrugged, face still hidden. Clint thought about leaving her alone, letting her laugh, giving her this one thing-- giving himself this one thing, really, because Bobbi was strong enough to take it. But he’d never left a fucking thing alone in his life, and even when he was trying to do so, he apparently had to pick at the scab.

“I think you’re relieved,” he confided.

Bobbi sat straight up in shock, tipping her head back till she was staring at the ceiling like someone up there might give her _patience_ if she just glared hard enough. She puffed up to argue more-- then deflated suddenly.

“I am so fucking relieved it’s pathetic,” she admitted, still staring at the ceiling.

“Oh,” Clint said. And holy shit, he’d had a good suspicion how much she’d dreaded having him around anymore, but fuck it hurt to hear her say it. “Well that’s something, right?”

“No, Clint,” she said, looking back down at him with those sad fond eyes, “it’s not really. I don’t want to feel like that about you, that’s shitty. It means I failed again.”

“You didn’t,” he told her, leaning forward. “Or I dunno, I guess I don’t get to make your calls. But… look… if it didn’t happen now, what if it happened later? Us splitting, I mean? What if I couldn’t be good enough, and you couldn’t get over what I’d done? What if I just made you worse?”

“It’d still have been my choice, Clint,” she said, reaching out to let one thumb caress the damp away from his cheek. “Still my fight. I don’t fucking want you trying to take that away from me.”

“I’m not trying to, Bobbi. I never could. I’m telling you I don’t think I could live with it, if I hurt you more,” Clint pulled her hand down and clasped it in his own, giving himself one last shot at memorizing the warmth of her skin, “And… I don’t think I could stand that you only want me to prove a point.”

She winced, and he took his hands away.

“Look,” he said when she didn’t move, “He didn’t beat you, okay? He beat me.”

“Nice,” she told him, and kissed his forehead. He let himself smile. “Not true. But nice.”

“True enough,” he told her. “You’re too tough to beat, Morse. You never stay down long.”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Bobbi said, standing up and cracking her spine, “You sure know how to flatter a girl. Look, if we’re done, I’m going to get out of here, okay. I don’t really want to be here when Jasper gets here, all things considered.”

Clint didn’t think he did either, but it wasn’t like he got a choice.

“Yeah, I can’t stop you,” he said, gesturing to himself, still tangled up in white cotton blankets and half-fallen out of his hospital gown. “Just… good luck, Bobbi, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said, and left. Clint turned up the tv again, so he wouldn’t have to hear her heels click on the linoleum on the way out of his life. 

As she passed under the tv some blonde lady was vamping behind a set of solid prison bars, pouting at him, and the captions were telling him that if she could escape, she could recreate a place that was her own world. Clint turned to watch Bobbi, but she was already out of the door by the time the singer asked him if it wouldn’t be sweet.

Clint flipped back to Judge Judy and settled in to wait for the sweet scent of griddled beef and Sitwell.

\-----

With a sigh, Phil dug into the pile of files that had overgrown his brushed metal in-tray, colonized the pending tray, and was beginning to make inroads on the out tray as well. There’d been something in the Eastern European regional briefing a day or so ago that had suddenly become vitally important-- but it was lost in the myriad briefings and status reports that he always meant to read and never managed to, which formed most of the untidy strata on his desk. 

It took longer and longer, these days, to fit back into his office after he’d been in the field. 

Well, he’d get Sitwell--Jasper, it was frequently Jasper when they weren’t on live ops-- to help him one night soon. One night very soon, given that the man had stuck his head in earlier that day and it had been bald and shiny as a new penny. Phil hadn’t even had to ask how Cecelia had taken Jasper’s unexpected sidebar in California, not with that kind of evidence. Anyway, Phil had been expecting it-- he’d barely resisted asking Jasper if he was _sure_. 

Then again, at the time Jasper had barely been refraining from asking him if he was sure that sending Clint to California was a good idea. It had been one of the weightier non-conversations Phil had ever had-- barring the one that had consisted of Nick Fury sighing “oh, Phil,” gently prying the gun from his fingers, and pulling him up by the hand. Phil didn’t think he’d ever top that one.

But what would Phil have said, anyway, apart from _he deserves his choice_? They both knew Barton’s strengths and weaknesses. They’d both resigned themselves to losing him to California, did it matter much whether it happened sooner or later? Wasn’t what mattered that they gave Clint this one gift at the end, this one chance? And how could he say _thank you_ earnestly enough without giving away the idiotic, unprofessional, ache in the pit of his stomach when he thought about Barton among strangers?

Well, he couldn’t look after Barton anymore-- and honestly that was probably a better thing all around. But he _could_ look after Jasper. It would help to have a bottle of something on hand for when he got around to mopeing in Phil’s office. That and an assignment to somewhere interesting-- which was why the Eastern European briefing was currently in his mind. He’d feel Jasper out for it, then send him off in company of-- not Barton, that was no longer an option-- in company of some other agent. Assuming Phil could find someone else he’d trust not to buy Jasper’s moon-face, or leave him alone long enough to call Cecelia and try to start something up _again._

Melinda May was the obvious choice, but she’d told him in no uncertain terms that if she didn’t get at _least_ a week at home with her husband she’d never be free for a Coulson team again. Phil set the problem aside and returned to his paperwork. As his fingers flew faster, he muttered to-- and caught himself mid-word when he realized he was reporting as if he still had a comm in his ear.

“Coffee,” he said aloud, straightening up and looking around. “Coffee.” Having suggested and approved the plan of action, Phil squared his shoulders, reached for the doorknob-- and _absolutely did not jump_ when someone knocked on the other side.

Seeing as his hand was already _there_ , Phil opened the door, and Clint Barton blinked at him from the other side.

“Agent… Agent Coulson?” Barton asked him.

“Enh?” Phil responded, and then stepped back to let Barton come in, using the brief moment to pull himself back together, so that the first words out of his mouth wouldn’t be _I was just thinking about you._ Instead, they were:

“You’re not in California.”

Barton flinched.

“Naw, I… um,” he trailed off into insensibility, lips still moving after the sound stopped coming out. He looked, in that moment, both more nervous and more weary than Phil had ever seen him, curse the man. “Someone was supposed to send it to you. Um. If you still want me?”

Phil nearly said “enh” again.

“Send me--” Then sharp satisfaction settled in his chest as Phil realized what Barton was telling him. He fought back the urge to chuckle. He’d come back.

Had Bobbi Morse finally put him out of his misery, or he her? 

Hell, it didn’t matter to Phil, and he was damned if he’d ask. Clint Barton had come back. The entire State of California could sob into its chardonnay over the loss, and it would only fill Phil with greater glee. 

“I’m sure the paperwork’s on my desk,” he told Barton, waving a careless hand behind him and retreating behind his desk. He refused to think about why he suddenly felt so damned light. “I’m still behind from Arizona. Sit down. I was just thinking about you.”

“Oh?” Barton said, collapsing into a visitor’s chair. The flight in must have been very long, for him to look quite so floppy and unfinished. 

“Yeah,” Phil said, and reached randomly into the stack of files. “I have an assignment for Agent Sitwell, and I want you in support.” 

The packet that came out in his hands was labelled _Continuing Surveillance Briefing, Hungary and the Balkans, August 2007._ He bit back a grin. Yes. This was just the type of operation that needed Jasper’s deceptively delicate, if slightly deranged, hand. And with Barton at his back, Phil wouldn’t need to worry about either of them for a little. Let miserable old Budapest soothe their respective romantic wounds, and then they could come back and Phil would take care of the rest.

\----

Clint felt like he was still in the air, no longer part of California-- no longer part of Bobbi-- not yet used again to the rhythm of life and the traffic of New York. Barely back, and already Coulson had plans to send him off again. 

That had hurt for approximately half a minute, until Clint had remembered that Jasper had done his ritual broke-up-with-Cecelia head shave. The waning phase of Jasper’s fast-balding pate nearly always seemed to link up with some kind of fresh and interesting new hell for them to get involved in, courtesy of Agent Coulson.

 _Phillip, you’re still a soft-hearted SOB under there_ , Clint thought, as amusement rushed all his nerves, leaving him aching in its wake. _Fine. I’ll take care of Jas for you._ It was the least he could do, after Phillip-- after Coulson-- had opened a frickin’ vein for him, in a manner of speaking. After he’d tried to give Clint his chance at a fresh start in California.

So, hey, apparently Clint was still trusted with Jasper Sitwell’s shiny scalp. That meant he couldn’t have messed shit up as badly as it felt like, in Arizona. Maybe there was still a chance he’d get to see Coulson’s eyes crinkle at the corners again someday, if he managed not to fuck everything up. 

Clint watched Coulson carefully as he set up a briefing for the three of them, asked a couple apparently lingering questions about Clint’s healing ribs, then dug out and signed Clint’s transfer cancellation forms, which were halfway buried under a pile of invoices from the Arizona op. 

“Are you okay with this?” Coulson asked as he finished the signature, almost idly. “I know this wasn’t your first choice.”

“No,” Clint said, trying to toss it off like he wasn’t admitting to running away from the one thing he’d said he wouldn’t back down from. “No, it wasn’t-- but I made the choice in the end, so I guess I’ll live with it.” 

He watched Coulson carefully for any hint of a reaction. Unfortunately, Coulson-watching was about on par with rock-watching: that schist wasn’t gonna go anywhere. 

“Anything you want to tell me to look for in the briefing packet, sir?” 

He asked it diffidently, figuring Coulson’d want him out of his office so he could finally get his ownself home. To his surprise, Coulson leaned back in his chair and nodded, then spent at least another twenty minutes taking him through the packet, like he had all the time in the world.

By the time Clint finally levered himself up out of the chair and got ready to leave, hand on the knob, he still hadn’t made up his mind to ask the question that’d been hamster-wheeling around in his mind ever since he’d woken up in a hospital bed in California.

“Thank you, Agent Barton,” Coulson said as he watched, “I’m glad to have you back.” 

And there they were, crinkles at the corners of his eyes, filling up with humor like the cuts in that fucking canyon had with rain. It wasn’t _Phillip_ , wasn’t a flood, but it was definitely there.

That was probably what decided him-- well, okay, that and the fact that if it all went south, he was already headed for Budapest.

“Coulson?” Clint asked, turning around, and he waited until a little of the humor faded out of Coulson’s face, replaced by polite concern. “Um…” 

_C’mon, Clint, just another fucking jump off a cliff. No big._

Clint tightened his grip on the doorknob, got the latch released and ready to go.

“Why did you….” He paused, because his mouth had gone dry and he had to work the spit up before he could keep going. 

Coulson’d gone still. Clint closed his eyes and heaved in one last breath. Aw hell, it wasn’t like Coulson hadn’t said far more personal shit to him than this. 

“Why didn’t you ever… just say _hi_ , when I got to SHIELD? Why… why not?” 

_Why couldn’t you tell me you were_ you _before you told me you’d tried to blow your own brains out? Why did you let me be such an idiot for so long?_

Clint could see when Coulson got what he was trying to ask. The twinkle in his eyes evaporated, and for an instant his face went dead flat Agent blank. Clint’s hand twitched on the doorknob.

Then, Coulson blinked, and his entire face crumpled in a little. When he looked back up, Clint was staring right back into Phillip’s eyes, across a tacky little taqueria table, all confusion mixed up with hurt.

“Why didn’t _you_?” Phillip’s voice had gone raspy. “What would you have wanted to say?”

Clint shrugged, figuring _I didn’t know it was you, you goddamn jerk_ wasn’t gonna be a useful answer. More like an outright insult, frankly, or an admission of Clint’s own stupidity. If there were any mercy in life, flowing somewhere deep beneath the dirt and shit, maybe Phillip would never find out that Clint hadn’t recognized him.

He settled, in the end, for a muttered “dunno” that could have meant either _I don’t know why I didn’t_ or _I didn’t know it was you,_ and hoped Phillip would go for the first one.

Phillip nodded, and bit his lip.

“Yeah,” he said after a long while, looking down at the papers strewn across his desk. “I didn’t think there was much to be said either. It was… it shouldn’t matter to anything you do at SHIELD, after all.”

Oh.

Clint let his head drop, closing his eyes against everything threatening to spill out of him. 

_It didn’t matter._

Fuck, he should be relieved, right? What the hell was this? Phillip-- Coulson-- was right. Miami was practically a lifetime in the past. If it felt close and humid at his back right now, that was just memories, and memories didn’t mean jack. 

“Anyway,” Coulson continued quietly, “you deserved a fresh start.”

Clint looked up so fast he cracked something in his neck. Coulson was still looking down at his paperwork, thank god, couldn’t see how bare Clint’s face was, that his mouth had fallen open.

So _that_ was what it felt like, to step off a cliff and not fall. To walk across a canyon on thin air and reach the other side.

He might have lost his chance to impress Phillip with a sudden transformation from fuck-up to cool and worldly agent of SHIELD, but getting Coulson in exchange turned out to be... not so bad at all. _Phil Coulson_ had trusted him enough to lay himself bare, had wanted him back, had work for him to do. Phil Coulson thought he was worth it, trusted him not only as an agent, but with taking care of Jasper. Phil Coulson thought he belonged here.

“I appreciate it,” Clint said, so relieved he was nearly slurring. He blushed as he heard it come out and shook his head, struggling for words. “And maybe… um, maybe this could just be another fresh start, right here? Given everything we, um, I told you when we… we could just maybe start over?”

And then he winced, hearing himself, and wondered how quickly he could scramble out the door. He just… he just wanted _one_ scrap of acknowledgement that Coulson remembered the desert, too.

Just as Clint was bunching his muscles to go, Coulson looked up. 

“If you want,” he said, and his eyes were as kind and crinkled as his voice was wary.

“Okay.” Clint nodded, then nodded again, then had to keep himself from nodding and nodding until his head fell off. “Just, um… how do… how do I do that?” ‘Cause he was _not_ going to fuck this up, not again.

“Same way you got yourself through that wash, Barton. Same way we all do. You put one foot in front of the other and keep breathing. That's all you can ever do…. And speaking of the wash, you probably see your fucking therapist.”

It wasn’t the acknowledgement Clint had expected, but as it turned out, it was enough.

“She’ll be thrilled,” Clint deadpanned, and was rewarded by a little lift of Coulson’s lip.

“All right,” Clint said, meeting Coulson’s eyes. They started out a little lost, but as Clint tried out a shaky smile, he watched the crinkles appear at the edges and start to deepen. “I’ll see you at the briefing tomorrow, sir.”

“That you will,” Coulson told him, and Clint went out and shut the door.

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up in the series: "Natasha." Historically, giving a probable publish date on these just ends in disaster so, um, fallish maybe?

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for: offscreen sexual harassment, onscreen breakup (Clint/Bobbi), offscreen suicide attempts, offscreen Hurricane Katrina, PTSD both offscreen and on, plus the aforementioned drowning. Everything except the Clint/Bobbi ends well and that’s probably better off ended, really.
> 
> Talk to me, please! I love and adore comments and read them over obsessively. Concrit is welcomed via ask on my [tumblr](http://kat-har.tumblr.com).
> 
> Soundtrack provided by: Rihanna “Umbrella”, The Long Blondes “Once And Never Again”, Gwen Stefani “The Sweet Escape”, MIA “Boyz”


End file.
